Calibration Strategies for Detecting Macroscale Patterns in NEON Atmospheric Carbon Isotope Observations
Fiorella RP, Good SP, Allen ST, Guo JS, Still CJ, Noone DC, Anderegg WR, Florian CR, Luo H, Pingintha-Durden N, Bowen GJ. 2021. Calibration Strategies for Detecting Macroscale Patterns in NEON Atmospheric Carbon Isotope Observations. Biogeosciences. 126(3):1-20
PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY: The magnitude and variability in the exchange of carbon between ecosystems and the atmosphere is a major source of uncertainty in carbon cycle models. These uncertainties have motivated substantial effort to measure these fluxes. Most observational methods provide an estimate of net carbon exchange, and efforts to break the net flux into its constituents requires a model, which without further constraints risks compounding observational uncertainties. Variations in the ratio of heavy-to-light carbon isotopes, 13C/12C, arise from photosynthetic responses to environmental conditions, and create a natural tracer to evaluate ecosystem fluxes. The NEON collects measurements of carbon isotope ratios of atmospheric carbon dioxide and plants and represents the largest network of consistently collected carbon isotope data associated with eddy covariance measurements to date. However, the accuracy of NEON's atmospheric carbon dioxide isotope ratios could be improved by using reference gas measurements to reduce bias and drift in these measurements. We develop and evaluate two correction methods and analyze continental-scale patterns in the corrected atmospheric carbon dioxide isotope data. Further, we make these tools available as an R package to enable further cross-site analyses using NEON's carbon isotope data.
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- Fiorella, Richard; Good, Stephen; Allen, Scott; Guo, Jessica; Still, Christopher; Noone, David; Anderegg, William; Florian, Christopher; Luo, Hongyan; Pingintha-Durden, Natchaya; Bowen, Gabriel
- Units
- GRSM , ROMO , YELL
- Keywords
- atmosphere, carbon cycle, carbon dioxide, carbon fluxes, ecology, GRSM-01211, National Ecological Observatory Network, NEON