Long-Term Influence of the BOREAS Field Experiment on Carbon Cycle and Ecosystem Research in Canada

Abstract:

The NASA-led Boreal Ecosystem–Atmosphere Study (BOREAS) field experiment brought together an interdisciplinary team of scientists during the mid-1990’s to study biosphere-atmosphere interactions of the boreal forest biome in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Canada. It represented the beginning of coordinated, long-term eddy covariance flux tower measurements of the exchanges of carbon dioxide, water, and energy at the ecosystem scale in Canada and initiated research on how to upscale these processes to larger spatial domains using remote sensing. The focus of this presentation will be on the long-term impacts of BOREAS on carbon cycle and ecosystems research in Canada. The BOREAS flux tower effort was expanded to the national level in Canada through the Fluxnet-Canada and Canadian Carbon Program research networks (2002-2011). Within these two research networks, many of the Canadian scientists brought together during BOREAS continued their close scientific collaborations and maintained their links to related programs in the US such as the North American Carbon Program. These Canadian efforts allowed us to improve greatly our understanding of the impacts of inter-annual climate variability and ecological disturbance on carbon, water and energy dynamics of northern forests and allowed us to use these flux data for calibration and validation of a wide-range of ecosystem modelling and analysis efforts. Many of the flux tower measurements continue to this day and they assure the long-term legacy of the NASA Terrestrial Ecology Program’s initial investment in the BOREAS field campaign.