We are excited to announce that our summary of the 2023 FLUXNET meeting in Brno, Czech Republic has been published in the Bulletin of American Meteorological Society. Our summary, Charting the Future of the FLUXNET Network, lays out the discussion topics and emerging themes covered during the 3-day meeting, as well as a roadmap for future FLUXNET activity.
The Brno meeting, the first FLUXNET meeting since 2017, brought together nearly 100 researchers from 24 countries. It was generously hosted by Mendel University, sponsored by Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS; www.icos-cp.eu/) and company representatives, and planned by colleagues from the Global Change Research Institute CAS and the FLUXNET Community Council (FCC). In addition to attending structured events, participants had ample time for casual discussion and network building during coffee hours, group meals, and a Moravian wine tasting dinner. We even toured the Lanzhot ecosystem station and the nearby Lednice Castle.
We touched on a myriad of topics during the meeting, including how to advance FLUXNET’s data sharing infrastructure, enhance global data availability, and set future community priorities. We discussed applying FLUXNET data in emerging carbon markets, validating remote sensing observations, improving land surface models, and the importance of long-term studies in understanding climate change impacts. The roadmap ahead emphasizes education, outreach, community building, and ensuring data processing and distribution are standardized and accessible, highlighting FLUXNET’s crucial role in ecosystem science and climate policy.
This in-person FLUXNET meeting was particularly special after years of pandemic-fueled isolation, and we look forward to the next FLUXNET meeting tentatively planned for 2025 in Australia.