The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) provides open-access measurements of stable isotope ratios in atmospheric water vapor (δ2H, δ18O) and carbon dioxide (δ13C) at different tower heights, as well as aggregated biweekly precipitation samples (δ2H, δ18O) across the United States. These measurements were used to create the NEON Daily Isotopic Composition of Environmental Exchanges (NEON-DICEE) dataset estimating precipitation (P; δ2H, δ18O), evapotranspiration (ET; δ2H, δ18O), and net ecosystem exchange (NEE; δ13C) isotope ratios. Statistically downscaled precipitation datasets were generated to be consistent with the estimated covariance between isotope ratios and precipitation amounts at daily time scales. Isotope ratios in ET and NEE fluxes were estimated using a mixing-model approach with calibrated NEON tower measurements. NEON-DICEE is publicly available on HydroShare and can be reproduced or modified to fit user specific applications or include additional NEON data records as they become available. The NEON-DICEE dataset can facilitate understanding of terrestrial ecosystem processes through their incorporation into environmental investigations that require daily δ2H, δ18O, and δ13C flux data.
Stable isotope ratios of H (
- PAR ID:
- 10463622
- Publisher / Repository:
- IOP Publishing
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Environmental Research Letters
- Volume:
- 18
- Issue:
- 9
- ISSN:
- 1748-9326
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- Article No. 094065
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract -
Abstract Carbon fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems and their response to environmental change are a major source of uncertainty in the modern carbon cycle. The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) presents the opportunity to merge eddy covariance (EC)‐derived fluxes with CO2isotope ratio measurements to gain insights into carbon cycle processes. Collected continuously and consistently across >40 sites, NEON EC and isotope data facilitate novel integrative analyses. However, currently provisioned atmospheric isotope data are uncalibrated, greatly limiting ability to perform cross‐site analyses. Here, we present two approaches to calibrating NEON CO2isotope ratios, along with an R package to calibrate NEON data. We find that calibrating CO2isotopologues independently yields a lower
δ 13C bias (<0.05‰) and higher precision (<0.40‰) than directly correctingδ 13C with linear regression (bias: <0.11‰, precision: 0.42‰), but with slightly higher error and lower precision in calibrated CO2mole fraction. The magnitude of the corrections toδ 13C and CO2mole fractions vary substantially by site, underscoring the need for users to apply a consistent calibration framework to data in the NEON archive. Post‐calibration data sets show that site mean annualδ 13C correlates negatively with precipitation, temperature, and aridity, but positively with elevation. Forested and agricultural ecosystems exhibit larger gradients in CO2andδ 13C than other sites, particularly during the summer and at night. The overview and analysis tools developed here will facilitate cross‐site analysis using NEON data, provide a model for other continental‐scale observational networks, and enable new advances leveraging the isotope ratios of specific carbon fluxes. -
Abstract The timescales associated with precipitation moving through watersheds reveal processes that are critical to understanding many hydrologic systems. Measurements of environmental stable water isotope ratios (δ2H and δ18O) have been used as tracers to study hydrologic timescales by examining how long it takes for incoming precipitation tracers become stream discharge, yet limited measurements both spatially and temporally have bounded macroscale evaluations so far. In this observation driven study across North American biomes within the National Ecological Observation Network (NEON), we examined δ18O and δ2H stable water isotope in precipitation (δP) and stream water (δQ) at 26 co‐located sites. With an average 54 precipitation samples and 139 stream water samples per site collected over 2014–2022, assessment of local meteoric water lines and local stream water lines showed geographic variation across North America. Taking the ratio of estimated seasonal amplitudes of δP and δQ to calculate young water fractions (
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Abstract We evaluate the efficacy of the stable isotope composition of precipitation and plant waxes as proxies for paleoaltimetry and paleohydrology in the northern tropical Andes. We report monthly hydrogen (δ2Hp) and oxygen (δ18Op) isotope values of precipitation for an annual cycle, and hydrogen isotope values of plant waxes (δ2Hwax) obtained from modern soils along the eastern and western flanks of the Eastern Cordillera of Colombia. δ2Hp, δ18Op, as well as the unweighted mean δ2Hwaxvalues of
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