2 Before the course : reading and skills

❗️This page is a work in progress - not all the links will work!

2.1 Key papers on the Eddy Flux

Aubinet, M., Vesala, T., & Papale, D. (Eds.). (2012). Eddy covariance: a practical guide to measurement and data analysis. Springer Science & Business Media.

Verma, S. B., Baldocchi, D. D., Anderson, D. E., Matt, D. R., & Clement, R. J. (1986). Eddy fluxes of CO2, water vapor, and sensible heat over a deciduous forest. Boundary-Layer Meteorology, 36(1-2), 71-91.

Baldocchi, D., Falge, E., Gu, L., Olson, R., Hollinger, D., Running, S., … & Fuentes, J. (2001). FLUXNET: A new tool to study the temporal and spatial variability of ecosystem–scale carbon dioxide, water vapor, and energy flux densities. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 82(11), 2415-2434.

2.2 Photosynthesis and the Farquhar, von Caemmerer, Berry model

The Farquhar model is one of the most important model’s in our field. With some impressive insight from a collaborative team of complementary scientists, the model forms an elegant backbone to the study of the carbon cycle. Read the Farquhar et al 1980 Paper and use the ‘Discussion’ as a guide for your reading.

2.3 Linking models and data

We were excited that Belinda Medlyn came to the course for week 1 in 2016. She talked about several different issues but one that’s sure to come up every year is how we devise experiments and modelling efforts to be complementary.

2.4 FolderRemote Sensing of GPP

It’s incredibly useful to be able to remotely sense vegetation on the Earth. However many scientists don’t understand the limitations of this technique. Tristan Quaife and Bill Smith have dealt with this issue in week two usually. The paper led by Faith Ann Heinsch has a host of co-authors from a wide range of different fields. Read the paper and see if you can answer the questions posed in the discussion.

2.5 A primer in Data Assimilation using MCMC

A few years ago we used the second week of the course as a template for this paper - it’s a gentle introduction to data assimilation using MCMC. There are links to code you can download yourself via John’s webpage: http://web.augsburg.edu/~zobitz/dataAssimilation.html

2.6 Where are the sources and sinks of Carbon around the globe?

In week two Dave Schimel comes by to give his ‘chalk talk’ it’s rarely the same twice but one of the key papers Dave will talk about is Tans, Fung & Takahashi 1990 from Science. It’s a short paper but it’s dense. The first time I read it, I needed to read it 4 times to understand it. Take a look at the paper and the disucssion questions. This will set you up for Dave’s talk and it’s a great overview for the theme of the course. You might also like to read Dave’s editorial on current issues in the C cycle, and also the 2014 paper that was based on the chalk talk. Schimel, D., Stephens, B. B., & Fisher, J. B. (2015). Effect of increasing CO2 on the terrestrial carbon cycle. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(2), 436-441.

Tans Fung and Takahahi 1990 Observational Constraints on the Global Atmospheric CO2 Budget

2.7 Dave’s gentle introduction to MATLAB

A very quick and basic introduction to using basic MATLAB functions (command line mathematical functions, importing data, plotting data)