Australian Research DataCommons Award 2024 - bigleaf R package

Start year: 2025

Summary: bigleaf is an open-source R package with the primary purpose of deriving biometeorological and ecophysiologicalland surface properties from eddy covariance data and accompanying meteorological measurements. The eddycovariance technique is widely used for measuring the exchange of energy, water, CO2, and other trace gasesbetween the land surface and the atmosphere. In Australia, the OzFlux network provides eddy covariance datafrom 39 sites, representing a wide range of eco-climatic settings across the country. While eddy covariance data are an invaluable source of information, flux measurements alone provide only limitedinsights into the underlying land surface processes which limits the ecophysiological and ecological interpretationof the data. In other words, the measurements tell us ‘what’ has happened, but they do not tell us ‘why’ it hashappened. The purpose of the bigleaf R package is to shed light on the ‘why’ question. The provided functions calculateecosystem functional properties (e.g. water-use effi ciency) that give additional insights into how ecosystemsrespond to environmental changes. Highlighted by over 80 citations on Google Scholar, this functionality hasproven valuable in fundamental science and for diverse applications, including ecosystem responses to drought,water use, fi re behaviour, and carbon sequestration. These applications are benefi cial for decision making in land and vegetation management, agriculture, and conservation ecology. I am not aware of other open-source software with similar functionality.