Observational partitioning of water and CO₂ fluxes at National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) sites: a 5-year dataset of soil and plant components for spatial and temporal analysis

Abstract

Long-term time series of transpiration, evaporation, plant net photosynthesis, and soil respiration are essential for addressing numerous research questions related to ecosystem functioning. However, quantifying these fluxes is challenging due to the lack of reliable and direct measurement techniques, which has left gaps in the understanding of their temporal cycles and spatial variability. To help address this open challenge, we generated a dataset of these four components by implementing five (conventional and novel) approaches to partition total evapotranspiration (ET) and CO2 fluxes into plant and soil fluxes across 47 National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) sites. The final dataset (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12191876; Zahn and Bou-Zeid, 2024) spans a 5-year period and covers various ecosystems, including forests, grasslands, and agricultural terrain. This is the first comprehensive dataset covering such a wide spatial and temporal distribution. Overall, we observed good agreement across most methods for ET components, increasing confidence in these estimates. Partitioning of CO2 components, on the other hand, was found to be less robust and more dependent on prior knowledge of water use efficiency. This highlights some limitations of these present methods that we discuss, emphasizing the broader challenge posed by the lack of an accurate reference method to validate against. Despite these limitations, this dataset has several potential applications, especially in addressing critical questions regarding the response of ecosystems to extreme weather events, which are expected to become more severe and frequent with climate change.