- 1School of Agriculture and Environment, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia
- 2Centre for Water and Spatial Science, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia
- 3Campbell Scientific, Logan, UT, USA
- 4School of Environment, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia
- 5Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network, The University of Queensland, 4072, QLD Australia
Australia’s Mediterranean ecosystems are among the most climate-variable on Earth, experiencing recurrent droughts and heatwaves that strongly regulate carbon uptake and water use. Long-term eddy covariance measurements from Australia’s Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) and OzFlux provide critical observations of net ecosystem exchange (NEE) from several Mediterranean woodlands, yet major uncertainties remain in partitioning these fluxes into gross primary productivity (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (ER), and in separating transpiration from total evapotranspiration. Improving these estimates is essential for understanding how Mediterranean ecosystems respond to climate extremes and for constraining regional contributions to the global carbon and water cycles.
As part of TERN activities in Western Australia, we have deployed additional research infrastructure to improve and constrain ecosystem photosynthesis, respiration and transpiration measurements over several endemic Mediterranean woodland ecosystems. Instrumentation includes fixed terrestrial laser scanners to quantify daily changes in canopy structure, hyperspectral sensors to derive vegetation indices and measure sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF), and distributed quantum sensor nodes to characterise within-canopy light absorption and scattering. Together, these measurements provide direct information on canopy architecture, photosynthetic activity, and radiation use efficiency – all of which are key drivers of carbon and water cycling.
We demonstrate how these novel observations improve interpretation of eddy covariance fluxes at the Boyagin wandoo woodland TERN site, as well as enhance constraints on photosynthetic dynamics during periods of heat and water stress. This work highlights the value of integrating proximal sensing with flux measurements to reduce uncertainty in ecosystem carbon and water fluxes and to strengthen links between ground-based observations and satellite-based products.
How to cite: Moore, C., Zandberg, J., Prajapati, P., Woodgate, W., and Beringer, J.: Multi-scale observations of carbon and water fluxes from a Mediterranean woodland ecosystem, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-8895, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-8895, 2026.
