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SuperSite Research Infrastructure overview

SuperSite Details

  • Vegetation type: Remnant Eucalyptus species woodland
  • Elevation: ~25 m
  • Rainfall: ~800 mm/yr
  • Mean Temperature: ~19°C
  • Soils: Sandy and clayey alluvium

The in-situ Flux Tower and associated infrastructure accomodates a monitoring system that quantifies the exchanges of water, carbon and energy between the ecosystem and the atmosphere. 

It’s a part of TERN – Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network – which  measures key terrestrial ecosystem attributes over time from continental scale to field sites at hundreds of representative locations over Australia and openly provides model-ready data that enable researchers to detect and interpret changes in ecosystems. Here you can get an overview of the Flux Towers that are present in Australia and New Zeeland.

The Flux Tower and associated infrastructure continuously records micrometeorological conditions (such as radiation, wind speed, humidity, temperature or air pressure), along with the concentrations of water and carbon dioxide. The Observatory is also equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation that provides detailed measurements of a variety of processes including tree growth, fuel moisture, or changes in the cycles and processes of plants and animals.

The Cumberland Plain TERN SuperSite is located in remnant Eucalyptus woodland in the Cumberland Plain, at the Hawkesbury campus of Western Sydney University in Richmond, New South Wales.

Associated research extends into the Blue Mountains ecoregion. These sclerophyll woodlands occur on nutrient-poor alluvium deposited by the Nepean River from sandstone and shale bedrock in the Blue Mountains. Despite this they support high regional biodiversity and endemic biota.

We also conduct regular surveys within a core-ha plot near the Flux Tower, which includes monitoring of standing tree biomass, understory species abundance and growth dynamics, leaf area and litter turnover, canopy phenology, and mistletoe infection status and associated tree mortality.

Our data are available in the FluxNet2015 synthesis and from the OzFlux Data Portal, or feel free to contact us directly. Read more about the site and data availability here.  

Cumberland Plain Flux Data Collection
More Cumberland Plain Flux Data Sets

Photo I Ljungblom

Photo I Ljungblom

Photo A Hewitt

A Tale of Two Species: Complex Vegetation Structure Determined by Different Functional Types

The canopy of the Cumberland Plain woodland around the main flux tower is dominated by two Eucalyptus species (E. moluccana and E. fibrosa), and is surrounded by a relatively homogeneous patch of Melaleuca decora trees (they usually grow below the eucalypt canopy). 

Below is a vertical transect through the Cumberland Plain woodland (top row) and associated 3D point clouds (middle row) outlining the approximate source areas of fluxes for the eucalypt-dominated stand (left; AU-Cum) and for the melaleuca-dominated stand (right; AU-Mel) generated from an airborne LiDAR flight in November 2015. The point clouds are colored according to canopy height, red color indicates eucalypt trees emerging through the melaleuca-dominated stratum (green shade). Photographs (bottom row) demonstrate the extensive shrub layer in the eucalypt stand in contrast to the sparse under-canopy vegetation in the melaleuca stand.

 

Figure 2. Vertical LiDAR return frequency of plots displayed in Fig. 1 & 2.
Figure 3. Basal area fraction of E. spp. (blue) and M. spp. (red) in the Cumberland plains.
Figure 4. Mistletoe infection classes surrounding CBLP flux tower (blue point). Linearly interpolated from leaf area estimates (0=80% mistletoe leaf area. (Griebel et al. in prep).
Figure 5. Standing tree biomass and associated mistletoe infection class in the core-ha. Each point represents a tree, the dot size indicates stem circumference and the color indicates mistletoe infection class (0=no mistletoe; 1=1-20%; 2=20-40%; 3=40-60%; 4=60-80%; 5=>80% mistletoe leaf area). Blue color indicates trees that died since the last survey. (Griebel et al. in prep).