BOREAS Forest Canopy Incoming PAR Data from SSA-OBS Site

July 1996 data on incoming photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) through the forest canopy, collected by the BOREAS TE-12 team at the SSA-OBS site. This dataset supports the characterization of shoot geometry, leaf optical properties, water potential, and gas exchange. It is hosted by ORNL_CLOUD and appears on multiple government data platforms.

Use Cases

• Modeling light attenuation and PAR availability within a boreal forest canopy.
• Correlating incoming PAR with concurrent measurements of leaf gas exchange and water potential.
• Validating remote sensing estimates of forest photosynthetic activity with ground-based radiation data.
• Studying diurnal and seasonal patterns of solar radiation absorption by vegetation in July.

Strengths

• Data collected during a focused field campaign from July 4 to July 25, 1996, providing a consistent temporal snapshot.
• Part of the larger BOREAS project, a major international effort to study the boreal forest biome.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA EarthData and Data.gov signals recognized importance and curation.

Limitations

• Key structural details like column names, row counts, and exact file sizes are unavailable from all sources.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates exist between platforms (1996-07-25 and 2026-03-13), creating uncertainty about metadata maintenance.
• The specific license is only noted as 'other-license-specified', requiring users to investigate terms.

Provenance

Source

BOREAS TE-12 team, organized under ORNL_CLOUD.

Collection Method

Ground-based collection of PAR data sets at the SSA-OBS site.

Time Range

1996-07-04 to 1996-07-25

Freshness

2026-03-13 12:14:13.888421

Geography

SSA-OBS site (likely Old Black Spruce site in the BOREAS Southern Study Area).