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Robson Creek Flux Data Release 2022_v2

<br>This release consists of flux tower measurements of the exchange of energy and mass between the surface and the atmospheric boundary-layer using eddy covariance techniques. Data were processed using PyFluxPro (v3.4.7) as described by Isaac et al. (2017). PyFluxPro produces a final, gap-filled product with Net Ecosystem Exchange (NEE) partitioned into Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) and Ecosystem Respiration (ER).</br>


<br>Robson Creek site is part of the Far North Queensland (FNQ) Rainforest Site along with affiliated monitoring sites at Cape Tribulation (Daintree Rainforest Observatory) and Cow Bay (Daintree Discovery Centre). The flux station is located at the foothills of the Lamb Range, part of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, and north-west of a 25&nbsp;ha census plot established by CSIRO in 2012.</br>


<br>The forest is classified as Regional Ecosystem (RE) 7.3.36a, complex mesophyll vine forest (Queensland Government, 2006). There are 211 species in the adjacent 25&nbsp;ha plot, and average tree height is 28&nbsp;m, ranging from 23 to 44&nbsp;m. Elevation of the site is 711&nbsp;m and mean annual precipitation is 2000&nbsp;mm. The upland rainforests of the Atherton Tablelands are some of the most biodiverse and carbon dense forests in Australia. The landform of the 25&nbsp;ha plot which is in the dominant wind direction from the station is moderately inclined with a low relief, a 30&nbsp;m high ridge running north/south through the middle of the plot and a 40&nbsp;m high ridge running north/south on the eastern edge of the plot.</br>


<br>The instruments are mounted on a free standing station at 40&nbsp;m. Fluxes of heat, water vapour and carbon dioxide are measured using the open-path eddy flux technique. Supplementary measurements above the canopy include temperature, humidity, windspeed, wind direction, rainfall, incoming and reflected shortwave radiation and net radiation.</br>


<br>Note: Level 3 data for 2015 - 2018 were updated in 2018 correcting a rainfall issue in 2015 and a wind direction issue 2016 - 2018. A data gap from 2019-02-14 to 2019-02-21 was due to a major power supply failure.</br>

Simple

Identification info

Date (Creation)
2013-08-01
Date (Publication)
2022-11-14
Date (Revision)
2025-12-10
Edition
2022_v2

Identifier

Title
DataCite
Code
doi:10.25901/p9bd-y623
Codespace
http://dx.doi.org

Publisher

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
+61 7 3365 9097

Author

James Cook University - Liddell, Michael (Associate Professor)
1 James Cook Drive, Bebegu Yumba campus, 4811, Douglas, Australia
Bebegu Yumba campus
Douglas
4811
Australia

Co-author

James Cook University - Weigand, Nico (Research Worker)
1 James Cook Drive, Bebegu Yumba campus, 4811, Douglas, Australia
Bebegu Yumba campus
Douglas
4811
Australia
Website
https://www.tern.org.au/

Purpose
The purpose of the Robson Creek flux station is:<ul style="list-style-type: disc;"> <li>to measure exchanges of carbon dioxide, water vapour and energy between the tropical upland rainforest in Far North Queensland and the atmosphere using</li> micrometeorological techniques</li> <li>to quantify the changes in carbon and water balances of an Australian tropical rainforest on a long term basis in the face of climate change</li> <li>to present the results from the study in real time to the public and inform the public on what these results mean.</li></ul>
Credit
We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
Credit
<br>The site is managed by James Cook University.</br> <br>This work is part of a collaborative study between JCU and a number of other institutions at the Robson Creek node of the FNQ Rainforest Site (CSIRO, ANU, Griffith, La Trobe, UQ). The work was funded by the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), an Australian Government National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) project, and the Queensland Government Research Infrastructure Co-investment Fund (RICF).</br>
Status
On going

Point of contact

James Cook University - Liddell, Michael (Associate Professor)
1 James Cook Drive, Bebegu Yumba campus, 4811, Douglas, Australia
1 James Cook Drive
Bebegu Yumba campus
Douglas
4811
Australia
Topic category
  • Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere

Extent

Description
Robson Creek, 24 km northeast of Atherton on the western slopes of the Lamb Range in Danbulla National Park, within the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.
N
S
E
W


Temporal extent

Time period
2013-08-01
Title
Beringer J., Hutley L. B., McHugh I., Arndt S. K., Campbell D., Cleugh H. A., Cleverly J., Resco de Dios V., Eamus D., Evans B., Ewenz C., Grace P., Griebel A., Haverd V., Hinko-Najera N., Huete A., Isaac P., Kanniah K., Leuning R., Liddell M. J., Macfarlane C., Meyer W., Moore C., Pendall E., Phillips A., Phillips R. L., Prober S. M., Restrepo-Coupe N., Rutledge S., Schroder I., Silberstein R., Southall P., Yee M. S., Tapper N. J., van Gorsel E., Vote C., Walker J. and Wardlaw T. (2016). An introduction to the Australian and New Zealand flux tower network - OzFlux, Biogeosciences, 13: 5895-5916
Website
Beringer J., Hutley L. B., McHugh I., Arndt S. K., Campbell D., Cleugh H. A., Cleverly J., Resco de Dios V., Eamus D., Evans B., Ewenz C., Grace P., Griebel A., Haverd V., Hinko-Najera N., Huete A., Isaac P., Kanniah K., Leuning R., Liddell M. J., Macfarlane C., Meyer W., Moore C., Pendall E., Phillips A., Phillips R. L., Prober S. M., Restrepo-Coupe N., Rutledge S., Schroder I., Silberstein R., Southall P., Yee M. S., Tapper N. J., van Gorsel E., Vote C., Walker J. and Wardlaw T. (2016). An introduction to the Australian and New Zealand flux tower network - OzFlux, Biogeosciences, 13: 5895-5916

Related documentation

Maintenance and update frequency
Biannually
GCMD Science Keywords
  • BIOGEOCHEMICAL PROCESSES
  • LAND PRODUCTIVITY
  • EVAPOTRANSPIRATION
  • TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS
  • ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE MEASUREMENTS
  • TURBULENCE
  • WIND SPEED
  • WIND DIRECTION
  • TRACE GASES/TRACE SPECIES
  • ATMOSPHERIC CARBON DIOXIDE
  • PHOTOSYNTHETICALLY ACTIVE RADIATION
  • LONGWAVE RADIATION
  • SHORTWAVE RADIATION
  • INCOMING SOLAR RADIATION
  • HEAT FLUX
  • AIR TEMPERATURE
  • PRECIPITATION AMOUNT
  • HUMIDITY
  • SOIL MOISTURE/WATER CONTENT
  • SOIL TEMPERATURE
ANZSRC Fields of Research
  • Atmospheric sciences
  • Climate change impacts and adaptation
  • Ecosystem function
  • Environmental management
  • Soil sciences
TERN Platform Vocabulary
  • Robson Creek Flux Station
TERN Instrument Vocabulary
  • Hukseflux HFP01
  • Environdata WeatherMaster 2000
  • Vaisala HMP45C
  • Campbell Scientific TCAV Averaging Soil Thermocouple Probe
  • LI-COR LI-7500
  • Hukseflux NR01
  • LI-COR LI-190 (SA, SZ, and SL versions)
  • Observator RIM-8000 series rain gauge
  • Campbell Scientific CS616
  • Campbell Scientific CSAT3
TERN Parameter Vocabulary
  • water vapor saturation deficit in air
  • Kilopascal
  • mole fraction of water vapor in air
  • Millimole per Mole
  • surface downwelling shortwave flux in air
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • specific humidity saturation deficit in air
  • Kilogram per Kilogram
  • soil temperature
  • Degree Celsius
  • surface upwelling longwave flux in air
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • lateral component of wind speed
  • Metre per Second
  • longitudinal component of wind speed
  • Square Metre per Square Second
  • ecosystem respiration
  • Micromole per Square Metre Second
  • net ecosystem productivity
  • Micromole per Square Metre Second
  • mole fraction of carbon dioxide in air
  • Micromole per Mole
  • air temperature
  • Degree Celsius
  • gross primary productivity
  • Micromole per Square Metre Second
  • wind speed
  • Metre per Second
  • mass concentration of water vapor in air
  • Gram per Cubic Metre
  • magnitude of surface downward stress
  • Kilograms per metre per square second
  • volume fraction of condensed water in soil
  • Cubic Metre per Cubic Metre
  • surface upward sensible heat flux
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • wind from direction
  • Degree
  • specific humidity
  • Kilogram per Kilogram
  • surface net downward radiative flux
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • water evapotranspiration flux
  • Kilograms per square metre per second
  • Monin-Obukhov length
  • Metre
  • water vapor partial pressure in air
  • Kilopascal
  • surface upward mole flux of carbon dioxide
  • Micromole per Square Metre Second
  • vertical wind
  • Metre per Second
  • surface upward flux of available energy
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • surface downwelling longwave flux in air
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • surface friction velocity
  • Metre per Second
  • surface upwelling shortwave flux in air
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • net ecosystem exchange
  • Micromole per Square Metre Second
  • relative humidity
  • Percent
  • surface air pressure
  • Kilopascal
  • surface upward latent heat flux
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • downward heat flux at ground level in soil
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • thickness of rainfall amount
  • Millimetre
QUDT Units of Measure
  • Kilopascal
  • Millimole per Mole
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • Kilogram per Kilogram
  • Degree Celsius
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • Metre per Second
  • Square Metre per Square Second
  • Micromole per Square Metre Second
  • Micromole per Square Metre Second
  • Micromole per Mole
  • Degree Celsius
  • Micromole per Square Metre Second
  • Metre per Second
  • Gram per Cubic Metre
  • Kilograms per metre per square second
  • Cubic Metre per Cubic Metre
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • Degree
  • Kilogram per Kilogram
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • Kilograms per square metre per second
  • Metre
  • Kilopascal
  • Micromole per Square Metre Second
  • Metre per Second
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • Metre per Second
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • Micromole per Square Metre Second
  • Percent
  • Kilopascal
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • Watt per Square Metre
  • Millimetre
GCMD Horizontal Resolution Ranges
  • Point Resolution
GCMD Temporal Resolution Ranges
  • 1 minute - < 1 hour
Keywords (Discipline)
  • eddy covariance
  • complex mesophyll vine forest
  • AU-Rob
  • Wet Tropics World Heritage Area

Resource constraints

Use limitation
The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license allows others to copy, distribute, display, and create derivative works provided that they credit the original source and any other nominated parties. Details are provided at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
File name
88x31.png
File description
CCBy Logo from creativecommons.org
File type
png
Linkage
https://w3id.org/tern/static/cc-by/88x31.png

Title
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
Alternate title
CC-BY
Edition
4.0
Website
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Access constraints
License
Use constraints
Other restrictions
Other constraints
TERN services are provided on an "as-is" and "as available" basis. Users use any TERN services at their discretion and risk. They will be solely responsible for any damage or loss whatsoever that results from such use including use of any data obtained through TERN and any analysis performed using the TERN infrastructure. <br />Web links to and from external, third party websites should not be construed as implying any relationships with and/or endorsement of the external site or its content by TERN. <br /><br />Please advise any work or publications that use this data via the online form at https://www.tern.org.au/research-publications/#reporting
Other constraints
Please cite this dataset as {Author} ({PublicationYear}). {Title}. {Version, as appropriate}. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. Dataset. {Identifier}.

Resource constraints

Classification
Unclassified
Environment description
<br>File naming convention</br> <br>The NetCDF files follow the naming convention below:</br> <br>SiteName_ProcessingLevel_FromDate_ToDate_Type.nc<ul style="list-style-type: disc;"> <li>SiteName: short name of the site</li> <li>ProcessingLevel: file processing level (L3, L4, L5, L6) </li> <li>FromDate: temporal interval (start), YYYYMMDD</li> <li>ToDate: temporal interval (end), YYYYMMDD</li> <li>Type (Level 6 only): Summary, Monthly, Daily, Cumulative, Annual</li></ul> For the NetCDF files at Level 6 (L6), there are several additional 'aggregated' files. For example: <ul style="list-style-type: disc;"> <li>Summary: This file is a summary of the L6 data for daily, monthly, annual and cumulative data. The files Monthly to Annual below are combined together in one file.</li> <li>Monthly: This file shows L6 monthly averages of the respective variables, e.g. AH, Fc, NEE, <em>etc.</em></li> <li>Daily: same as Monthly but with daily averages.</li> <li>Cumulative: File showing cumulative values for ecosystem respiration, evapo-transpiration, gross primary productivity, net ecosystem exchange and production as well as precipitation.</li> <li>Annual: same as Monthly but with annual averages.</li></ul>

Distribution Information

Distribution format

Distributor

Distributor

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
80 Meiers Road, Indooroopilly, Queensland, 4068, Australia
Indooroopilly
Queensland
4068
Australia
OnLine resource
NetCDF files (2022_v2)

OnLine resource
ro-crate-metadata.json

Data quality info

Hierarchy level
Dataset
Other
<br>Processing levels</br> <br>Under each of the data release directories, the netcdf files are organised by processing levels (L3, L4, L5 and L6):<ul style="list-style-type: disc;"> <li>L3 (Level 3) processing applies a range of quality assurance/quality control measures (QA/QC) to the L1 data. The variable names are mapped to the standard variable names (CF 1.8) as part of this step. The L3 netCDF file is then the starting point for all further processing stages.</li> <li>L4 (Level 4) processing fills gaps in the radiation, meteorological and soil quantities utilising AWS (automated weather station), ACCESS-G (Australian Community Climate and Earth-System Simulator) and ERA5 (the fifth generation ECMWF atmospheric reanalysis of the global climate).</li> <li>L5 (Level 5) processing fills gaps in the flux data employing the artificial neural network SOLO (self-organising linear output map).</li> <li>L6 (Level 6) processing partitions the gap-filled NEE into GPP and ER.</li></ul> Each processing level has two sub-folders ‘default’ and ‘site_pi’:<ul style="list-style-type: disc;"> <li>default: contains files processed using PyFluxPro</li> <li>site_pi: contains files processed by the principal investigators of the site.</li></ul> If the data quality is poor, the data is filled from alternative sources. Filled data can be identified by the Quality Controls flags in the dataset. Quality control checks include: <ul style="list-style-type: disc;"> <li>range checks for plausible limits</li> <li>spike detection</li> <li>dependency on other variables</li> <li>manual rejection of date ranges</li></ul> Specific checks applied to the sonic and IRGA data include rejection of points based on the sonic and IRGA diagnostic values and on either automatic gain control (AGC) or CO<sub>2</sub> and H<sub>2</sub>O signal strength, depending upon the configuration of the IRGA.</br>

Resource lineage

Statement
All flux raw data is subject to the quality control process OzFlux QA/QC to generate data from L1 to L6. Levels 3 to 6 are available for re-use. Datasets contain Quality Controls flags which will indicate when data quality is poor and has been filled from alternative sources. For more details, refer to Isaac et al. (2017).
Hierarchy level
Dataset
Title
Isaac P., Cleverly J., McHugh I., van Gorsel E., Ewenz C. and Beringer, J. (2017). OzFlux data: network integration from collection to curation, Biogeosciences, 14: 2903-2928
Website
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-14-2903-2017

Method documentation

Title
PyFluxPro
Website
https://github.com/OzFlux/PyFluxPro/wiki

Method documentation

Reference System Information

Reference system identifier
EPSG/EPSG:4326

Reference system type
Geodetic Geographic 2D

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/0cff2da9-6d14-4e40-8f02-9140ba505335

Title
TERN GeoNetwork UUID

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

Point of contact

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
+61 7 3365 9097
Title
Robson Creek Flux Data Collection

Identifier

Code
ebe0f735-57e8-4064-be75-9023b0ac4302
Codespace
https://geonetwork.tern.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/
Description
Parent Metadata Record

Type of resource

Resource scope
Dataset
Metadata linkage
https://geonetwork.tern.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/0cff2da9-6d14-4e40-8f02-9140ba505335

Point-of-truth metadata URL

Date info (Creation)
2022-03-17T00:00:00.000000+00:00
Date info (Revision)
2025-12-10T10:31:17.261474+00:00

Metadata standard

Title
ISO 19115-1:2014/AMD 1:2018 Geographic information - Metadata - Fundamentals
Edition
1

Metadata standard

Title
ISO/TS 19115-3:2016
Edition
1.0

Metadata standard

Title
ISO/TS 19157-2:2016
Edition
1.0
Title
Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-3:2016 and ISO 19157-2:2016
Date (published)
2021
Edition
1.0

Identifier

Code
10.5281/zenodo.5652221
Website
https://github.com/ternaustralia/TERN-ISO19115/releases/tag/v1.0

 
 

Overviews

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W


Keywords

ANZSRC Fields of Research
Atmospheric sciences Climate change impacts and adaptation Ecosystem function Environmental management Soil sciences
GCMD Science Keywords
AIR TEMPERATURE ATMOSPHERIC CARBON DIOXIDE ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE MEASUREMENTS BIOGEOCHEMICAL PROCESSES EVAPOTRANSPIRATION HEAT FLUX HUMIDITY INCOMING SOLAR RADIATION LAND PRODUCTIVITY LONGWAVE RADIATION PHOTOSYNTHETICALLY ACTIVE RADIATION PRECIPITATION AMOUNT SHORTWAVE RADIATION SOIL MOISTURE/WATER CONTENT SOIL TEMPERATURE TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS TRACE GASES/TRACE SPECIES TURBULENCE WIND DIRECTION WIND SPEED

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