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Site Description

The Silver Plains flux tower is located at Interlaken, on the Tasmanian central plateau, Australia (GPS coordinates -42.15, 147.13, elevation 880m), on land owned and managed by the Tasmanian Land Conservancy.

The site is a natural grassy sedgeland with an average summer temperature of 16°C, average winter temperature of 6°C, and average annual rainfall of approximately 900mm. Soil at the site is peaty, being an organosol containing on average 8 kgCm⁻² in the top 10cm, overlying black vertosol on Jurassic dolerite. The vegetation at the site is heavily grazed year round by a range of native vertebrate herbivores, including wallabies, pademelons and wombats, as well as by feral fallow deer, resulting in an extremely low vegetation stature of a few centimetres, with the exception of inflorescences which can extend up to 30cm above the ground.

The instrument tower is 3m tall, with carbon dioxide, water and heat fluxes being measured using an open-path eddy flux technique at 2.5m. Additional measurements include wind speed and direction, air temperature, humidity, incoming and outgoing short and longwave radiation, rainfall, soil temperature and soil water content.