What's included in this module? File/folder descriptions are below:

"Drivers of Ecosystem Carbon Fluxes_Faculty Notes" .docx file: Here, you'll find details on learning objectives, assessments, challenges, and expectations, along with readings to bring you up to speed on carbon flux measurements and their use in ecology.

"Drivers of Ecosystem Carbon Fluxes_Student Handout" .docx file: This file describes exercises 1 through 3, which build on one another. For introductory courses or single laboratories, instructors may choose to conduct only #1 and #2, which ask students to hypothesize and then evaluate time-series of ecosystem carbon flux data. #3 requires students to construct a simple statistical model and then, using historical air temperature data, predict future changes in ecosystem respiration; this exercise requires basic understanding of statistical modeling and the logical progression from model development to parameterization and prediction.

"Part 1. Carbon fluxes, eddy covariance, and its application" and "Part 2. Module activity tutorial" .pptx files: Part 1 is a primer on eddy-covariance derivation of ecosystem carbon fluxes. Part 2 can be projected as students work through the exercises, and includes guiding questions and screenshots of relevant websites and spreadsheet data analysis.

"Data example" folder: Included here are data for the University of Michigan Biological Station Ameriflux site. To save time, rather than having students download data, instructors may choose to freely download and provide data from students via the FLUXNET2015 data portal: http://fluxnet.fluxdata.org/data/fluxnet2015-dataset/. As eddy-covariance based ecosystem flux data from National Ecological Observatory Network sites become available, they will be processed and available for download fromthe FLUXNET site in .csv format within a zipped folder. 

Chris Gough
Questions? Contact me: cmgough@vcu.edu