New Automated Soil Flux Network

ADC BioScientific (UK) specialist in the design and manufacture of high quality environmental research instrumentation has introduced a new, Automated Soil Flux Network.

Natural biomass respiration from soil is a major source of carbon dioxide (CO2). Understanding soil CO2 flux and its relationship with other sources and sinks within the carbon cycle are currently subject to increasing scientific scrutiny in relation to global climatic change.

The new Automated Soil CO2 Exchange System (ACE) is designed for the long-term, unattended monitoring of soil flux.

The automated design of the ACE Station allows the area of soil being analysed to be exposed to ambient conditions between measurement cycles.

Each ACE Station features a highly accurate CO2 infrared gas analyser housed directly inside the soil chamber assembly. This design ensures the fastest possible response times to CO2 changes, avoids potential gas “hang-ups” in long lengths of tubing and is incredibly power efficient as there is no requirement to pump gas from a soil chamber to a separate analyser.

Each ACE Station is a complete, fully integrated soil flux system comprising the soil chamber and arm that pivots from the control panel.

The ACE Station is easy to set up and program in either an Open or a Closed mode configuration. Sensors for measuring PAR, soil moisture and soil temperature may also be connected to each ACE Station.

Up to 30 ACE Stations can be connected together, via a Master Control Unit, in an ACE Network that can cover a 200m diameter experimental area. The Master Control Unit can program and power all the ACE Stations as well as store data at one central point. However, as all soil flux measurements are made locally at each ACE Station, there are no long lengths of gas connections making the ACE Networks both highly accurate and very power efficient.

This powerful and sophisticated research system will prove an invaluable tool in enhancing our understanding of a host of global, environmental change issues.