Open Earth Monitor — Global Workshop 2023

In-situ data collection is a fundamental part in the domain of ecosystem observations and monitoring. Continuous measurements of energy and matter exchanges at the ecosystems/atmosphere boundary by means of the eddy covariance (EC) technique are fundamental observations across the wide range of in-situ measurements, in particular concerning carbon and other greenhouse gases and water balances. Monitoring stations based on this technique and organised in networks at different scales, from national to global, providing precious insights to different users, are a standard in the environmental sector. The Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) is one of such research infrastructures, working at the European scale. The ecosystem domain of ICOS, dealing with terrestrial observations in natural and anthropic ecosystems, is not only providing EC datasets, but also numerous meteorological and other auxiliary variables to support the activity of the network. In the present work we describe the portfolio of the main products included in a typical ICOS ecosystem station: from continuous measurements of CO2 and H2O exchanges, to the above- and below- ground meteorological parameters, to the discontinuous ancillary measurements of different vegetation characteristics – spanning from tree height to above-ground biomass, from soil characteristics to plant area index, from species distribution to litter mass. The continuous datasets are provided at different scales, from half-hourly to yearly. All the datasets, supplemented by a detailed set of metadata ensuring the consistency with the FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reusability), are stored on a safe repository and both openly and freely distributed (with license CC-BY 4.0) to researchers, modelers, and any user that requests them.

In the framework of Earth Observations (EO), in-situ measurements are a fundamental pillar for the characterisation of ecosystem behaviour. Vegetation responses to stressors, trends and changes in ecological functioning, species abundance and characterisation are only a few examples of currently available in-situ datasets worldwide. The combination of in-situ timeseries with other EO products, such as remote sensing and other geospatial datasets, gives rise to the possibility of characterising, modeling and predicting ecosystem functionalities and dynamics from local to global scales. In this framework, the Horizon-Europe funded project Open-Earth-Monitor Cyberinfrastructure (OEMC) aims at collecting a wide range of such datasets, elaborating them together with other EO products, and creating specific technological tools to ease their sharing and usability. A consistent part of the project is dedicated to gathering and analysing a huge in-situ datasets portfolio, characterized by a large variety in terms of data types, scales, accuracy and documentation. In-situ observations potentially available to the project span from continuous monitoring (e.g. greenhouse gas fluxes) to sampling campaign (e.g. species distribution), from half-hourly to yearly scales, from highly-standardised datasets to citizen science observations, from remote sensing datacubes to single tree measurements, from vegetation to fauna checklists, from terrestrial to freshwater habitats, and so forth. The need for harmonisation is huge, especially concerning the relevant metadata. In the present poster we report on the main characteristics of such in-situ datasets, including the spatial and temporal scales, accessibility, format and standardization.