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Abstract Agroecosystems, which include row crops, pasture, and grass and shrub grazing lands, are sensitive to changes in management, weather, and genetics. To better understand how these systems are responding to changes, we need to improve monitoring and modeling carbon and water dynamics. Vegetation Indices (VIs) are commonly used to estimate gross primary productivity (GPP) and evapotranspiration (ET), but these empirical relationships are often location and crop specific. There is a need to evaluate if VIs can be effective and, more general, predictors of ecosystem processes through time and across different agroecosystems. Near‐surface photographic (red‐green‐blue) images from PhenoCam can be used to calculate the VI green chromatic coordinate (GCC) and offer a pathway to improve understanding of field‐scale relationships between VIs and GPP and ET. We synthesized observations spanning 76 site‐years across 15 agroecosystem sites with PhenoCam GCCand GPP or ET estimates from eddy covariance (EC) to quantify interannual variability (IAV) in the relationship between GPP and ET and GCCacross. We uncovered a high degree of variability in the strength and slopes of the GCC∼ GPP and ET relationships (R2 = 0.1 ‐ 0.9) within and across production systems. Overall, GCCis a better predictor of GPP than ET (R2 = 0.64 and 0.54, respectively), performing best in croplands (R2 = 0.91). Shrub‐dominated systems exhibit the lowest predictive power of GCCfor GPP and ET but have less IAV in slope. We propose that PhenoCam estimates of GCCcould provide an alternative approach for predictions of ecosystem processes.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available September 1, 2026
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Thomasson, J. Alex; Torres-Rua, Alfonso F. (Ed.)sUAS (small-Unmanned Aircraft System) and advanced surface energy balance models allow detailed assessment and monitoring (at plant scale) of different (agricultural, urban, and natural) environments. Significant progress has been made in the understanding and modeling of atmosphere-plant-soil interactions and numerical quantification of the internal processes at plant scale. Similarly, progress has been made in ground truth information comparison and validation models. An example of this progress is the application of sUAS information using the Two-Source Surface Energy Balance (TSEB) model in commercial vineyards by the Grape Remote sensing Atmospheric Profile and Evapotranspiration eXperiment - GRAPEX Project in California. With advances in frequent sUAS data collection for larger areas, sUAS information processing becomes computationally expensive on local computers. Additionally, fragmentation of different models and tools necessary to process the data and validate the results is a limiting factor. For example, in the referred GRAPEX project, commercial software (ArcGIS and MS Excel) and Python and Matlab code are needed to complete the analysis. There is a need to assess and integrate research conducted with sUAS and surface energy balance models in a sharing platform to be easily migrated to high performance computing (HPC) resources. This research, sponsored by the National Science Foundation FAIR Cyber Training Fellowships, is integrating disparate software and code under a unified language (Python). The Python code for estimating the surface energy fluxes using TSEB2T model as well as the EC footprint analysis code for ground truth information comparison were hosted in myGeoHub site https://mygeohub.org/ to be reproducible and replicable.more » « less
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