Summary/Goals: Establish and operate eddy flux towers in NM as part of the prototype environmental observatory. Coordinate with NM flux group
Activities and outcomes during past year:
Two new towers completed and upgraded, data sharing plan completed, will submit new tower and met data in 12/08, graduate RA hired to process the fluxes.
Plans for the upcoming year:
We will continue to operate the two
Valles Caldera towers in coordination with other towers in the NM-EPSCoR Arid Upland Node which include desert grassland, desert shrubland, juniper savanna and pinyon-juniper woodland sites. We are using these towers, and collaborating with other observatory collaborators to understand process controls on the partitioning of precipitation and identifying linkages between water and carbon cycling.
Specific new projects include quantifying the contribution of soil respiration to ecosystem carbon fluxes, and teasing out the transpiration contribution to ET fluxes at each of the towers sites. We will also add heat flux plates to each of the Valles Caldera towers to increase our ability to quantify energy balance at these sites.
We will continue to submit grant proposals to continue this research.
