Beacon Farm
The Beacon Farm flux site (a paired site) is located on an intensively managed dairy farm on the Mid-Canterbury plains, South Island, New Zealand. The site was established in 2012 and managed by Landcare Research. The research is supported by Core Funding for Crown Research Institutes from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's Science and Innovation Group.

There were two micrometeorological EC flux towers, at ca. 300 m distance from each other. One of them was in an irrigated, fertilised, rotationally grazed paddock (labelled "IFR" in file names), Fluxnet site name NZ-BFm. Measurements at this site ceased on 15 July 2015. Three site-years of data are available, with the last 33 days of the third year completely gap-filled.

The other flux tower was in an adjacent unirrigated, winter-grazed paddock (labelled "UUW" in file names), Fluxnet site name NZ-BFu. In November 2013 (11 weeks into the second year of data), this site was converted to a kale crop for the purpose of winter-feeding by direct grazing (which occurred at the end of the second data year). Continuous measurements at this site ceased on 25 August 2014, and therefore, only two site-years are available here.

For more site details please see the file "Site description for FLUXNET NZ-BFm and NZ-BFu.docx" in this collection (updated 16 Dec 2016). The description on the website:
http://www.ozflux.org.au/monitoringsites/beaconfarm/beaconfarm_description.html
has not been updated since 2014.

For the available 3+2 site years, we provide here data in the standard OzFlux format at Level 3 (NC and XLS) and at Level 4 (including gap-filled meteorological variables, NC format only). Please note that CO2 fluxes during times of cow-herd presence (short intensive grazing events) were removed prior to any processing, because the animal respiration would overwhelm the CO2 exchange between pasture and atmosphere. These intensive grazing events decimated the vegetation thoroughly, 10 times per year at the IFR site and once or twice per year at the UUW site, and in order to gap-fill the CO2 fluxes in a meaningful fashion this abrupt change in biomass needs to be represented by a suitable driver. In our own research, we have used NDVI for this; here we provide NDVI as well as a simple on/off index to indicate grazing events.

In addition, we provide Excel files with processing up to Level 6 (fluxes gap-filled and partitioned), but these deviate from the standard OzFlux format in that the filtering for lack of turbulence at night was done using the standard deviation of wind speed (Uz_Sd) rather than friction velocity, with a threshold value of 0.12 m/s. The rationale for this is explained in Hunt et al. (2016), Biogeosciences 13, p. 2927-2944.
Created by Johannes Laubach, Creation date: 2016-02-05 07:54, Modified by Johannes Laubach, Modified date: 2017-11-21 11:00
Temporal Coverage:
2012-08-17 - 2013-08-16
Metadata Published:
No
Data Licence

The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) restricts the development of new data/products, so that a user can:

  • copy, re-use, share and distribute the copies of the data

provided that, whenever the data are copied, re-used, or distributed the user ensures that:

  • credit is given to the original sources/s of the data (and any other nominated parties) in the manner stipulated (Attribution);
Citation Information
If you make use of this collection in your research, please cite:
Johannes Laubach (2016 ) Beacon Farm OzFlux: Australian and New Zealand Flux Research and Monitoring hdl: 102.100.100/26730
A total of 26 data file(s) in this collection
File Name:
BeaconFarm_UUW_2013-14_L6-Uz_Sd-filtered_T&SHDcorrected.xls
Site Name:
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_UUW_2012-13_L6-Uz_Sd-filtered_T&SHDcorrected.xls
Site Name:
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR_2014-15_L6-Uz_Sd-filtered_T&SHDcorrected.xls
Site Name:
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR_2013-14_L6-Uz_Sd-filtered_T&SHDcorrected.xls
Site Name:
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR_2012-13_L6-Uz_Sd-filtered_T&SHDcorrected.xls
Site Name:
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
Site description for FLUXNET NZ-BFm and NZ-BFu.docx
Site Name:
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_UUW_2013-14_L6-Uz_Sd-filtered.xls
Site Name:
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_UUW_2012-13_L6-Uz_Sd-filtered.xls
Site Name:
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_UUW_2013-14_L4.nc
Site Name:
BeaconFarm_UUW
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_UUW_2013-14_L3.nc
Site Name:
BeaconFarm_UUW
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_UUW_2013-14_L3.xls
Site Name:
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_UUW_2012-13_L4.nc
Site Name:
BeaconFarm_UUW
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_UUW_2012-13_L3.nc
Site Name:
BeaconFarm_UUW
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_UUW_2012-13_L3.xls
Site Name:
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR_2014-15_L6-Uz_Sd-filtered.xls
Site Name:
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR_2013-14_L6-Uz_Sd-filtered.xls
Site Name:
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR_2012-13_L6-Uz_Sd-filtered.xls
Site Name:
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR_2014-15_L4.nc
Site Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR_2014-15_L3.nc
Site Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR_2014-15_L3.xls
Site Name:
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR_2013-14_L4.nc
Site Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR_2013-14_L3.nc
Site Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR_2013-14_L3.xls
Site Name:
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR_2012-13_L4.nc
Site Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR_2012-13_L3.nc
Site Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.
File Name:
BeaconFarm_IFR_2012-13_L3.xls
Site Name:
Processing Level:
 
Access to this file is not restricted, and it is no longer eligible for restriction.