CENS

Our goal for the TEOS program was to develop a dense network of sensors that would allow us to track the spatial and temporal dynamics of ecosystem processes. Our overall hypothesis is that events, both spatially, such as animal disturbances or an individual tree mortality, and temporally, such as a monsoon, snowfall, or even hurricane, drive ecosystem processes far beyond the averaging or infrequent measurements that characterize ecosystem studies. Flux towers (such as the Ameriflux network) provide long-term, high temporal resolution of carbon and water fluxes, but cannot penetrate the within-footprint pipes and perturbations that drive dynamics. Soil cores can provide high spatial resolution of activity at a time, but turn a site into swiss cheese and cannot track dynamics through time. Other efforts to place sensors provide information at a point, but fail to describe the incredible spatial variation that simultaneously occurs temporally.