Ray Leuning and OzFlux: Australian Ecosystems and their role in Regional Carbon, Water and Energy Budgets

Consistent with his lifetime passion for quality observations and a quantitative understanding of plant and ecosystem processes, Dr Ray Leuning has been both a founder and science leader of Australia's OzFlux network (www.ozflux.org.au) throughout its journey from small beginnings in the early 2000s to the current network of over 30 flux tower sites across Australia. The impact of the data made available via OzFlux owes much to his energy and scientific commitment.

This presentation will describe OzFlux, and the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network which partially funds OzFlux. It will focus on the way that Ray's research has helped the evolving flux community – not just in Australia but globally – to deliver measurements of the highest standard that are useful for the weather, climate and terrestrial ecosystem communities alike. The global FluxNet community are grappling with the challenge of how best to construct constrained, resolved assessments of the carbon and water budgets from these high frequency, direct but local-scale flux observations. Some of our approaches that combine flux and remotely sensed observations – both within the flux footprint and across ecosystems – will be presented, along with the science that is still needed.

Of course, one of the “holy grail” goals for earth system and ecosystem science is to develop a simulation capability that adequately represents the interactions between humans, climate and ecosystems. CABLE is Australia's community land surface model, based on an original two-leaf canopy scheme published by Ray and Yingping Wang and now coupled into ACCESS – Australia's new global weather and climate model. This presentation will conclude with a discussion of the critical role that OzFlux and Ray's research have played in developing and testing CABLE; and the impact of this contribution on Australia's climate, earth system and ecosystem research.