RIFT

FairCarboN’s target project RIFT will help strengthen infrastructure (i.e., flux towers) used for monitoring greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes at the soil-vegetation-atmosphere (SVA) interface. These towers are essential tools for assessing carbon fluxes in agroecosystems. RIFT will gather highly diverse data, including measurements of different land-surface fluxes (energy/water/carbon), related observations (e.g., proxidetection), and information on the variables and mechanisms shaping the fluxes.

The project’s infrastructure network is spread across a dozen sites in Mediterranean and tropical zones. Currently, data from these towers are present but underrepresented in global databases (e.g., FLUXNET). RIFT will bring together researchers with a wide range of expertise, including metrologists, modellers, ecophysiologists, and hydrologists. Project participants have committed to continuously collecting data over the five-year duration of the project. A set of standardised measurements will be made at each site, with certain additional measurements to be gathered at specific sites.

A major objective of RIFT is to boost the expertise and autonomy of the network's on-site partners by providing technical support and training. RIFT is composed of four work packages (WPs). WP1 concerns data acquisition and dissemination, and it will focus on tasks such as protocol development, metrology, data post-processing methods, diagnostic procedures, gap filling, and archiving. WP2 will characterise and quantify a number of different processes within and across sites: net primary productivity, soil carbon balance, respiration, and general ecosystem functioning (e.g., indicators of carbon use efficiency, water use efficiency). WP3 will implement, compare, and improve existing dynamic functional models to obtain time-series data for key variables, whether observed directly or indirectly (e.g., hydric status, heterogeneity). Finally, WP4 will explore the utility of various remote-sensing tools, from commercially available products to multisensor multispectral models that can reconstruct spatial variability and ensure reliable scaling for data at different resolution levels. It will exploit local in-situ measurements gathered using proxidetection and/or drones.

Project coordinators: Jérôme Demarty (IRD, HydroSciences Montpellier), Olivier Roupsard (CIRAD, Eco & Sols), and Gilles Boulet (IRD, Cesbio)

Partner institutions: French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD), French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), University of Toulouse Capitole (UTC), University of Grenobles Alpes (UGA), French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE)