International partnership for ecological observations at the continental scale: TERN-Australian Supersite Network/NEON partnership

Background/Question/Methods

In Australia the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) has established a number of national facilities including the Australian Supersite Network (ASN) to provide long-term high quality ecosystem observations on a continental scale. The aim of the Supersite network is to vastly improve our scientific understanding of how key ecosystems in Australia are responding to environmental change.

The Australian Supersite Network comprises a set of 10 Supersites spread across the continent.  Each Supersite provides a suite of biodiversity, biogeochemical and biophysical data streams which are stored as data sets on an open-access Data portal.  Integration of data sets from long term continental-scale monitoring initiatives such the TERN Supersites and NEON will substantially increase our understanding of major environmental challenges such as the impacts of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems.

Partnerships between TERN and NEON aim to improve interoperability and data integration between the networks allowing intercontinental comparisons and the testing of continental scale environmental change hypotheses.  Areas of cooperation between NEON and TERN include the development of compatible protocols for measurement, calibration techniques, quality control and data handling. In addition to links between the Supersites and NEON’s terrestrial and aquatic observation groups, cooperative activities are occurring at the remote sensing level between the TERN-AusCover facility and the NEON-Aerial Observation Platform and between TERN-OzFlux and the NEON-Terrestrial Instrument System flux monitoring networks.

Results/Conclusions

A typical Australian Supersite has many similarities to a NEON terrestrial monitoring core site, collecting micrometeorological flux and soil measurements and intensive data sets on flora, fauna and biophysical processes using classical field techniques and sensor systems.

Data collected from the Supersites are described, formatted and indexed and metadata harvested into a central national repository to facilitate public discovery of the data. Data delivery methods have been developed to enable the release of ecosystem data while maintaining non-restrictive creative commons style licensing.

In contrast to NEON the Supersite network is being rolled out in a progressive manner with both the number of sites and the number of measurements at each site being increased in each Federal funding round.  Within the Supersite network the current focus is on refining monitoring protocols and quality assurance measures for the next round of funding. In addition there is an emphasis on harmonization of protocols 
with international long-term ecosystem monitoring networks, in particular NEON which has a similar framework, scope and emphasis.