VCR Fowling Point Salt Marsh Flux Tower, 2019-2023

This dataset contains eddy covariance CO2 and H2O fluxes, sensible and latent heat fluxes, and meteorological measurements collected in an intertidal salt marsh. The flux tower is part of the Virginia Coastal Reserve Long Term Ecological Research (VCR LTER) site on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, USA. The marsh is on the Atlantic Ocean side of the Delmarva Peninsula and faces shallow coastal lagoons backed by barrier islands. No major rivers drain into the area. The tower is located 2 km from the shoreline and 85 m from a major creek edge. The marsh is dominated by Spartina alterniflora (also referred to as Sporobolus alterniflorus), with an average height of 0.6 m. The semidiurnal tidal cycle inundates the marsh platform twice daily, with 10% of time points having water above the mud platform (indicated by the MHHW dataset variable). Fluxes were measured at 10Hz and averaged over 30 minutes. The CO2 and energy fluxes were gap-filled using the REddyProc software package (doi: 10.5194/bg-15-5015-2018). Using the nighttime approach, the gross primary production and ecosystem respiration fluxes were partitioned from the net ecosystem exchange flux. The research was conducted at the Virginia Coastal Reserve Long Term Ecological Research (VCR LTER) site on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, USA. The flux tower site (37-deg 24'39.85"N, 75-deg 50'0.53"W) a lagoonal salt marsh which is located near the area of Fowling point. The site is located at about 2.2 kilometers away from the mainland and 10.7 kilometers away from Hog Island, the nearest barrier island. The flux tower is situated at about 80 meters away from the creek edge, on the lagoonal salt marsh.