Metadata standard proposal for eddy covariance flux data

Eddy covariance flux data measures carbon dioxide and water vapor fluxes within the atmosphere boundary layer. Large volume of flux data has been accumulated, shared and exchanged within the ecological research communities. However, a standardized way of describing the characteristics of the flux data, and the data processing procedures is still missing. This problem prevents the flux data from being well utilized beyond the ecological communities, being easily understood by the researchers from other fields, and being integrated with the research data accumulated in other domains. This research presents a metadata architecture for eddy covariance flux data based on ISO 19115: Geographic information - Metadata standard. The content and structure of the proposed metadata are illustrated in UML (unified modelling language). A XML schema implementation of the metadata standard is also presented. Finally, an application case study of utilizing this metadata proposal for the US-China Carbon Consortium group is introduced and discussed.