It has taken almost 3 years, but the new 35 metre eddy-covariance flux tower at the Wombat Stringybark Eucalypt SuperSite has officially been completed and is again collecting data
Australia’s network of flux towers ensures the country has access to direct, real-time measurements of carbon and energy fluxes in the landscape. The flux tower data allows researchers to monitor carbon cycling between the landscape and the atmosphere as it happens so they can directly monitor how it is changing over time.
The flux tower located at TERN’s Wombat Stringybark Eucalypt SuperSite, deep in the Victorian Wombat State Forest, suffered calamity on 9 June 2021 when extreme winds caused trees to fall on guy wires securing the tower. The tower buckled and internally twisted and could not be salvaged.
The fallen TERN flux tower in June 2021
Rather than building another guy-roped tower and risk a repeat of damage from falling branches, NCRIS-enabled TERN was able to secure additional grant funds from the Australian Government to improve resilience of the infrastructure. The replacement tower that opened in 2024 is free-standing and has a staircase design.
New Flux tower at TERN’s Wombat Stringybark Eucalypt SuperSite (credit: Dr Markus Loew)
The TERN Wombat Stringybark Eucalypt SuperSite first began operating in January 2010 and the former flux tower instruments collected data for more than a decade until the fateful windstorm in 2021 interrupted data flow for 3 years.
The Wombat State Forest where the site is located is approximately 12km from Daylesford (the town was formally called Wombat) and 40km from Ballarat, in Victoria, Australia. The 45,100 hectares of Wombat State Forest are home to more than 350 species of native plants and 290 species of native animals, including 15 that are threatened. There are at least 25 rare and threatened plant species.
The site is a secondary regrowth forest that was last harvested in 1980. The understorey is sparse, comprising bracken ferns and tussock grass, and the soil is a silty-clay overlying clay. The forest is managed by the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, which undertakes selective harvesting and prescribed burning regimes. The climate is cool temperate, with typically 600-700 mm of precipitation annually.
The site continuously records carbon dioxide, water vapour and energy exchange between the atmosphere and the forest, as well as weather and soil parameters. It also records photosynthetically active, shortwave, longwave and net radiation.
An adjacent mobile laboratory contains a gas analyser that every minute measures concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide in the air within rectangular chambers, monitoring gas exchange with the soil.
For more information:
https://www.tern.org.au/site-of-the-month-wombat-supersite/
