Fluxes in the Spotlight: Advancing Earth System Science with Proximal Remote Sensing.

A new proliferation of optical instruments that can be attached to towers over or within ecosystems, or ‘proximal’ remote sensing, enables a comprehensive characterization of terrestrial ecosystem structure, function, and fluxes of energy, water, and carbon. Proximal remote sensing can bridge the gap between individual plants, site-level eddy covariance fluxes, and airborne and spaceborne remote sensing by providing continuous data at a high spatiotemporal resolution. Here, we review recent advances in proximal remote sensing for improving our mechanistic understanding of plant and ecosystem processes, model development, and validation of current and upcoming satellite missions. We provide current best practices for data availability and metadata for proximal remote sensing: spectral reflectance, solar-induced fluorescence, thermal infrared radiation, microwave backscatter, and LiDAR. Our paper outlines the steps necessary for making these data streams more widespread, accessible, interoperable, and information rich, which enables us to address key ecological questions unanswerable from space-based observations alone; and ultimately, demonstrate the feasibility of these technologies to address critical questions in local and global ecology.