To improve tropical forest representation in Earth system models (ESMs), NGEE-Tropics is carrying out field and lab studies to generate key data, and integrate diverse existing data with this new data. The resulting data products are valuable for model development, parameterization, and testing. The NGEE-Tropics Data Synthesis and Management Framework includes infrastructure for archiving project data collections, and for defining and building data synthesis and analysis products needed as model parameters and benchmarks.
The FATES modeling efforts need meteorological-driven datasets generated through consistent QA/QC and gap-filling protocols for intercomparison of cross-site simulation results. In addition, key data for benchmarking such as carbon fluxes, sapflow, and soil moisture, need to be quality checked, processed, and synthesized from different field sites prior to use.
The NGEE Tropics data team helps obtain existing tropical datasets in partnership with collaborators, performs quality assurance, quality control (QA/QC) and data transformations as needed, implements synthesis-product-generation pipelines, and manages the underlying data. To accomplish this, computational and data scientists work closely with RFA teams to build a framework that will support key project synthesis efforts.
The data team maintains the NGEE-Tropics Archive, a portal intended to be a key resource for the broader tropical forest and ESM research communities that provides access to project data enabling broad usage consistent with the NGEE -Tropics Data policy. NGEE-Tropics public data are also mirrored on the DOE’s ESS-DIVE data repository.
Figure 1. Visual representation of the NGEE-Tropics Data Synthesis and Management Framework.