TERN OzFlux Litchfield Tower Site

The Litchfield flux station is located in the Litchfield National Park, 80km south of Darwin in the Northern Territory. It was established in 2015 and is managed by The University of Western Australia and Charles Darwin University.The station is located in the Savanna Super Site (SSS) a 5 km x 5 km block of relatively uniform open-forest savanna inside the park about 80 km south of Darwin. The SSS is a research and monitoring site representative of high rainfall, frequently burnt tropical savanna. Tropical savanna in Australia occupies 1.9 million square km across the north and given the extent of this biome, understanding biogeochemical cycles, impacts of fire on sequestration, vegetation and fauna is a national priority.In the NT, savanna ecosystems are largely intact in terms of tree cover, with only modest levels of land use change. Despite this, there is evidence of a loss of biodiversity, most likely due to shifts in fire regimes and a loss of patchiness in the landscape. Approximately 40% of the savanna burn every year and understanding fire impacts on fauna and flora is essential for effective land management.
 
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Date ( Creation )
2015-12-10T11:07:36
Date ( Publication )
2015-12-10T11:07:36
Date ( Revision )
2018-03-23T09:00:00
Edition
2.0.0 
Citation identifier
http://hdl.handle.net / hdl: 102.100.100/25690

  Author

  Collaborator

Purpose
The Litchfield flux station will provide nationally consistent observations of vegetation dynamics, faunal biodiversity, micrometeorology (climate, radiation, fluxes of carbon and water), hydrology and biogeochemistry to examine the impacts of fire regime, climate on carbon stocks and GHG emissions, and impacts on habitat quality via ongoing monitoring of vegetation structure and fauna. A wide range of ground based observations of vegetation structure and floristics is planned and all will link to remote sensing of fire and vegetation change over time. Co-location of Flux observations and remote sensing systems will be co-located to provide TERN with a ground-/air-/space based remote sensing observation stream. This will enable the development of tools describing fire occurrence, severity and associated greenhouse gas emissions, evapotranspiration and carbon sequestration On-going fauna and flora monitoring will be undertaken at 5 sites within the SSS footprint that are component sites of the '3 Parks' data base, a long-term (15 years+) monitoring program across the 3 major national parks of the NT (Kakadu, Nitmiluk and Litchfield National Parks) that is examining the effects of fire frequency on vegetation structure and woody growth rates. Fire management, both protective and experimental burning regimes will be implemented across the SSS to assess impacts of fire on flora, fauna and biogeochemical cycles in savanna. The tower will provide long-term measurements as part of the Ozflux network. Key research questions What are the impacts of prevailing fire regimes (primarily frequency, but also intensity, extent, heterogeneity) on vegetation structure and composition, habitat quality, fragmentation and vertebrate faunal biodiversity? How does vegetation structure, climate drivers and fire regime influence savanna carbon sequestration rate? How can fire management contribute to greenhouse gas abatement and carbon sequestration in savanna ecosystems? What are the impact of climate change on fire regimes and subsequent feedbacks to savanna carbon and water cycles? 
Credit
Jason Beringer (2015 ) Litchfield OzFlux Tower Site OzFlux: Australian and New Zealand Flux Research and Monitoring hdl: 102.100.100/25690 
Status
On going  

  Principal investigator

Topic category
  • Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere
Description
Litchfield National Park OzFlux Site, Northern Territory 
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Time period
2015-06-232017-11-28 
Minimum value
0 
Maximum value
35 
Maintenance and update frequency
Annually  
Title
NetCDF4 
Edition
CF 1.7 
theme.sciencekeywords-8.1_.rdf
  • HEAT FLUX,
  • LAND PRODUCTIVITY,
  • SOIL MOISTURE/WATER CONTENT,
  • SHORTWAVE RADIATION,
  • AIR TEMPERATURE,
  • LONGWAVE RADIATION,
  • PHOTOSYNTHETICALLY ACTIVE RADIATION,
  • SOIL TEMPERATURE,
  • CARBON DIOXIDE,
  • HUMIDITY,
  • BIOGEOCHEMICAL PROCESSES,
  • PRECIPITATION AMOUNT,
  • EVAPOTRANSPIRATION,
  • TURBULENCE,
  • TRACE GASES/TRACE SPECIES,
  • ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE MEASUREMENTS,
  • INCOMING SOLAR RADIATION,
  • WIND SPEED/WIND DIRECTION,
  • CARBON,
  • TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS
discipline.neii_neii-observation-method_version-1.rdf
  • inSituLandBasedPlatforms
( Temporal )
temporal.neii_neii-sampling-regime_version-1.rdf
  • oneMinuteToOneHour
discipline.ands-curated_anzsrc-for_2008.rdf
  • Environmental Monitoring,
  • Ecosystem Function,
  • SOIL SCIENCES,
  • ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES,
  • EARTH SCIENCES,
  • ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES,
  • ECOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS
Access constraints
License  
Use constraints
License  
Other constraints
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License 
Classification
Unclassified  
Language
English  
Character encoding
UTF8  
Supplemental Information
Jason Beringer (2015 ) Litchfield OzFlux Tower Site OzFlux: Australian and New Zealand Flux Research and Monitoring hdl: 102.100.100/25690 
OnLine resource
An introduction to the Australian and New Zealand flux tower network – OzFlux

Journal article

OnLine resource
OzFlux data: network integration from collection to curation

Journal article...describes the data sets, along with their quality control and post-processing...

mdb:MD_Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid / 85f11ac2-52ec-4957-9777-2d1ede0f22d9

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Resource scope
Dataset  
Metadata linkage

Point-of-truth metadata URL

Date info ( Revision )
2018-11-16T06:09:55
Date info ( Creation )
2014-06-27T11:20:35
Title
ISO 19115.1:2015 Geographic information - Metadata – Fundamentals 
Edition
1.0 
Title
ISO 19115-3:2016 
Edition
1.0 

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