Eddy Flux Measurements, Ridge Station, Imnavait Creek, Alaska - 2016

Abstract: 

In contribution to the Arctic Observing Network, the researchers have established two observatories of landscape-level carbon, water and energy balances at Imnavait Creek, Alaska and at Pleistocene Park near Cherskii, Russia.  These will form part of a network of observatories with Abisko (Sweden), Zackenburg (Greenland) and a location in the Canadian High Arctic which will provide further data points as part of the International Polar Year.  This particular part of the project focuses on simultaneous measurements of carbon, water and energy fluxes of the terrestrial landscape at hourly, daily, seasonal and multi-year time scales.  These are the major regulatory drivers of the Arctic climate system and form key linkages and feedbacks between the land surface, the atmosphere and the oceans.  We will provide a comprehensive description of the state of the regional Arctic system with respect to these variables, its overall regulation and controlling features and its interaction with the global system.

In support of these objectives, a 3m eddy covariance station was established on a low ridge adjacent to Imnavait Creek, Alaska.  This station has been continuously monitoring carbon dioxide, water vapor, energy fluxes and various micrometeorological variables. 

Project Keywords: 

Data set ID: 

20042

EML revision ID: 

4
Published on EDI/LTER Data Portal

Citation: 

Bret-harte, M., Euskirchen, E., Shaver, G. 2018. Eddy Flux Measurements, Ridge Station, Imnavait Creek, Alaska - 2016 Environmental Data Initiative. http://dx.doi.org/10.6073/pasta/2bc85ddbd13c7c2d064b76e782dde859
People

Owner/Creator: 

Contact: 

Additional People: 

Associated Researcher
Dates

Date Range: 

Friday, January 1, 2016 to Saturday, December 31, 2016

Publication Date: 

2018

Methods: 

There are two types of data that are collected from each flux station involved in the AON project: high frequency eddy covariance (EC) data and low frequency means of meteorological and subsurface data.  On a daily basis, approximately 75Mb of high frequency binary data and 16Kb of low frequency ASCII data is collected.

This station uses a CR3000 datalogger and a laptop to collect and store data.  The CR3000 is used to measure the open-path EC equipment which is sampled at 10Hz.  Mircrometeorlogical data is scanned at 0.33Hz and all datapoints are averaged every half hour.  The CRBASIC program that controls the datalogger has been written in such a way that only the most basic corrections and filtering are applied to the raw data.  These would include shifting the CSAT3 and LI7500 data arrays by 2 and 3 scans respectively to account for the inherent processing delays of these sensors. 

About Data Processing
Time is expessed as local time, AST (UTC-9hrs) for Imnavait and MAGST (UTC+12hrs) for Pleistocene Park
Gas and energy fluxes are calculated from the high frequency time series using EdiRe or EddyPro software with these basic corrections:  despiking, coordinate rotation, spectral correction, the 'WPL' correction, and the 'Burba' correction (where appropriate, to account for instrument heating effects).
Some data have been filtered (_f) and gap-filled (_gf).
The generation of mass and energy fluxes from the high frequency data is performed with the following basic corrections:
The 'WPL' correction
A coordinate rotation
A spectral correction
The 'Burba' correction (where appropriate to account for instrument heating effect)
*Correct instrument lag adjustment occurs during datalogging
 
The following QA/QC variables are applied to the flux data:
Stationarity tests
Footprint analysis
Gas analyzer diagnostics are used as a QA/QC variable for both flux and radiation data
Rejection angles of 10° at Imnavait and 45° at Pleistocene Park are used when EC instruments were downwind of tower to remove flow distortions 
 
The flux and meteorological data is further post-processed to accomplish the following:
Data are within engineering specifications of each instrument. 
Removal of impossible measurements (e.g. negative precipitation)
Removal of outliers via a three-standard deviation filter
Removal of unrealistic changes in a time series with a step change filter
A similarity filter to remove errors from instruments that generate a string of identical values when not working

Flux variables are calculated using Licor's EddyPro flux processing software. The quality control flags for flux variables (either raw or filtered) are calculated using the Mauder and Foken (2004) method within the EddyPro. Flag values and meanings are available on the Licor web site at https://www.licor.com/env/help/eddypro/topics_eddypro/Flux_Quality_Flags...

Gaps in the data are filled using the BGC_Jena gapfilling tool ReddyProc.  Information on the gap-filling protocol is available here, https://www.bgc-jena.mpg.de/bgi/index.php/Services/REddyProcWebGapFilling. The meaning of the quality control flags for all gap-filled (_gf) variables is listed here (https://www.bgc-jena.mpg.de/bgi/index.php/Services/REddyProcWebOutput) under the _fqc entry.
 

See the file  2016_IC_1991_metadata_20161231.csv for data collection statistics.
 

Version Changes: 

Jan 2018-Version 1: Dataset first available
April 2019: Version 2: Corrected publication date in metadata. BK
June 2019-Version 3: Updated metadata, removing abbreviations. Added detail to site descriptions. BK
Oct2019-Version 4: Units were messed up in metadata; max and min values included unit. Jim L

Sites sampled.

Full Metadata and data files (either comma delimited (csv) or Excel) - Environmental Data Initiative repository.

Use of the data requires acceptance of the data use policy --> Arctic LTER Data Use Policy