TERN (funded by NCRIS and EIF) has been developing coherent community-wide management structures for several of the required key data streams, so the relevant data are no longer unmanaged. eMAST builds on this infrastructure, by generating products that integrate the different streams of data e.g. water use and other ecosystem functions. The eMAST ANUClimate climate surfaces will be the first, continental 0.01 degree (nominal 1km) resolution climate surfaces generated using the Hutchinson et al. (ANU) methodology. Combined with the ancillary bioclimatic, ecosystem variables and indices derived from these data, this will be the first complete collection of its kind made publically available as a single resource.

This collection of datasets, is a resource for the ecosystem science community and enhances the capacity for research. For example the development of an advanced benchmarking system for terrestrial ecosystem models (i.e. PALS). In addition, the data will be made accessible through the SPEDDEXES web-interface at the NCI, making the data sets conveniently available to a wide audience/community.

The datasets generated within the scope of eMAST focus on Australia ecosystems, but are expected to encourage global as well as national interests, because of the universal data formats use.

The project is thus expected to facilitate ecosystem modellers to perform comparative analyses of model performance; build new connections between Australian and overseas researchers, and between different research communities in Australia; and accelerate the development, testing and optimization of terrestrial ecosystem models.

Working towards the next generation of robust, process based ecosystem models; we are synthesizing observations of plant biophysical and physiological traits, developing gridded surfaces of these traits, and working with TERN MultiScale Plot Network to improve national coverage of trait measurements. Working in collaboration with international collaborators from NEON and NCAR; eMAST are demonstrating and developing Australia capacity for making models utilise these information rich collections.

More information about this collection can be found at http://www.emast.org.au