Tuesday’s Report from LSP/Flux group:

1. Tuesday’s Report from LSP/Flux group: Bradley, de Beurs, Hargrove, Henebry, Morisette, Noormets, Reed, Wilson, Yu Our major achievement: A “Chinese Restaurant Menu” matrix to generate possible questions Useful, but a caveat that only a subset of possible questions are sensible or accessible.

3. Some Questions Resulting from the Matrix 1/2 What is the change in timing of peak canopy development by ecoregions of the US? What is the inter-annual variation of peak timing across ecoregions of the US? What is the spatial variability within these ecoregions? What do ecoregions look like to minimize the variability between them (contiguous vs non-continuous)? When is vegetation more vulnerable to disturbance? What is the synchrony for various phenomena with themselves and the timing of phenological processes. How does the phenology of a given process depend on the scale at which you observing? What is the change in synchrony in mammalian herbivory and vegetative development/growth? What is the change in onset of senescence as a function of temperature? How does the timing of vegetation growth affect the susceptibility of insect invasion? How does the timing of vegetation growth affect the success of pollination? How does the magnitude of dust storms affect snow cover? How do fires affect the magnitude and frequency of dust storms?

4. Some Questions Resulting from the Matrix 2/2 How does plant phenotypic plasticity relate to species extent and abundance? How the distribution of plant phenotypic plasticity relate to magnitude of disturbance? How do past severe frost events affect future growth and reproduction? What is the change in variability of growing season length by ecoregion? What is the change of peak magnitude of vegetation growth as modulated by climate oscillations? What is the effect of synchrony between insects and vegetation growth? How does the magnitude (or timing) of peak canopy development in a grassland relate to seasonal soil moisture? How is the beginning of vegetation growth related to lake ice break-up? How is the timing of CO2 uptake in a deciduous forest related to timing of last frost? What is the change in the beginning of senescence as modulated by the insect damage? What is the change in duration of flowering as affected by distance to urban areas? What is the synchrony of bird arrivals as a function of insect damage? Is the spatial variability in CO2 flux consistent (in spatial arrangement) across years? How are spring/fall peaks in respiration related to soil moisture? What are the spatial and temporal variation of SOS, EOS, and GSL modulated by snow cover?

5. Today’s Charge to the Breakout Groups • Refining IPCs & Questions • Continue to work on identifying and refining the IPCs and the questions motivating them, especially through interactions with the other groups. • Rank ordering of the questions/IPCs. • Start exploring the details: • (1) Are the data available to support the proposed IPC? • (2) How should the data be processed? • (3) Who are the “go to” people for the data/question & what is their contact info?

6. Products recommended by from LSP/Flux group 1/2 • 1. Question/Motivation: Because there are common miscommunications in the community, we need to make RS/LSP data products more accessible and understandable to ecological community so that they can take advantage of what currently exists. • a. Product: “outreach” review targeted to inform BioScience or Frontiers audiences about what is possible now and what is still to come (maybe). • b. Affiliated product: Integrated weblist at USA-NPN website of description and links to RS/LSP extant data products. • c. Affiliated product: User-accessible animations of LSP green-wave ebb & flow (mpg, avi, mov) for outreach • Tasked to whom: (a) group effort led by Bethany B; (b) Jeff M.; (c) Jeff M., Bill H., Kirsten d. • 2. Question/Motivation: Exploring beyond SOS to identify better LSP metrics to link with ground obs. • a. Product: Maps of peak timing of NDVI/EVI/WDRVI – use AVHRR, MODIS, Landsat WELD Composites – for several exemplar sites having ground observations of plant phenology & flux sites • b. Affiliated product: PCA/Factor analysis of common pheno-metrics to identify groups of similar behavior, including separate applications to LSP curves vs. Flux curves vs. climate curves, etc. • Tasked to whom:(a) Kirsten d. and Geoff H. and Jeff M. and Feng G. and Asko N. (b) deferred.

7. Products recommended by from LSP/Flux group 2/2 • 3. Question/Motivation:To provide a geospatial stratification of CONUS to identify regions of comparable phenological behavior from the LSP perspective. • a. Product: Pheno-regionalization of MODIS 2001-2008 • b. Affiliated product: Network analysis using Ameriflux, NEON, LTER, Lilac network, and then…Budburst & USA-NPN sites • c. Tasked to whom: (a & b) Bill H. • 4. Question/Motivation: Need for integration of land product validation perspective to guide future sampling and integration of phenological observations. • a. Product:Paper describing how to implement NPN plant protocols in a geospatial context to facilitate linkage with remote sensing observations. (9 months – after Dublin June 2010 mtg) • b. Tasked to whom: TBD (Jeff M., Bethany B., Mark S., Geoff H.)