FluxnetEO: having Earth observations complement measurements at eddy-covariance stations

Speakers: Sophia Walther and Simon Besnard

In-situ observations are key for understanding ecosystem processes, for model development and benchmarking, and for creating global estimates of land-atmosphere exchange. Earth observations can complement the in-situ measurements and help diagnose surface conditions in and beyond the flux footprint, and as such are critically needed in the analysis and interpretation of local measurements. Obtaining such satellite measurements at the sites and assuring adequate quality and preprocessing are recurrent questions that require expert knowledge and are laborious. We propose the FluxnetEO data sets to the community as one way of bridging the gap between the eddy-covariance, modelling and remote sensing communities. They represent surface reflectance and land surface temperature at several hundreds of sites. FluxnetEO means careful processing to assure high quality, and estimates of samples in data gaps using only temporal operations independently of external ancillary data for data spanning several decades. The current version2 of FluxnetEO includes high temporal sampling (daily) but spatially comparatively coarse (500-1000m) MODIS data, as well as low temporal resolution (monthly) but high spatial detail (30m) Landsat data. We will introduce the main characteristics of FluxnetEO, explain its strengths and weaknesses, also in comparison to similar Earth observation data sets at site level, and give some examples of potential use cases.