The National Research Foundation (NRF) has highlighted that the global FLUXNET Shuttle data system became fully operational last week, and that the South African Environmental Observation Network (NRF-SAEON) played an important role in its creation and is a significant contributor to it. FLUXNET Shuttle collects flux data from regional networks around the world, in real time, and makes this data available to researchers around the globe.

“Flux data is the direct measurement of the exchange of carbon, water, and energy between land and atmosphere from tropical forests to Arctic tundra,” explained the NRF. “It measures turbulent, vertical, and horizontal air movements (“eddies”) to understand how ecosystems such as forests, farms, or water bodies interact with the air, acting as sources or sinks for greenhouse gases.”

The creation of FLUXNET Shuttle needed the various regional networks to closely work together, and agree on data licences, data formats, common quality checks and processing, and a data publishing system. It is the outcome of a collaboration and exchange process that spanned ten or so years, including the development of the ONEFlux open-access code family.

“Through NRF-SAEON, and its research infrastructure, the Expanded Freshwater and Terrestrial Environment Observation Network (EFTEON) operates long-term flux tower sites that are now feeding directly into this global system,” explains EFTEON Northern Drakensberg landscape scientist: biogeochemistry Dr Kathleen Smart. “What’s new here is access. Previously, these kinds of datasets were locked into occasional or once-off releases. Now, through the shuttle, the data are continuously updated and openly accessible, allowing fair principles, findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. That matters because it allows scientists, policymakers and even emerging sectors such as carbon markets to work with consistent, high-quality data at a regional and global scale.”

FLUXNET Shuttle embraces more than 700 sites around the world and has nearly 6 000 site-years of data. It started coming on line at the end of last year and allows analysis at a global scale.

“And crucially, it reduces bias,” she highlights. “For a long time, Africa has been underrepresented in global environmental datasets. The inclusion of NRF-SAEON on sites [sic] helps correct that, bringing the southern hemisphere, water-limited and disturbance-driven ecosystems into the global picture.”