COSORE

COSORE provides a community database and software platform for collecting, standardizing, and analyzing continuous soil-to-atmosphere CO2 (soil respiration, R_S) and CH4 flux data to support quantitative studies of soil carbon and greenhouse gas exchange.

Key Features:

• Data types: Stores high-frequency automated measurements of soil respiration (CO2, R_S), methane (CH4) fluxes, ecosystem respiration (Reco), and chamber-measured net ecosystem exchange (NEE).
• Standardized data model: Maps contributed datasets to a single, consistent standard to ensure uniform data structure and comparability across sites and studies.
• Metadata capture: Records contributor information, geographic location, measurement conditions, and ancillary data for each dataset.
• Experimental coverage: Accommodates datasets from observational and experimental treatments, including heterotrophic-only studies.
• Analysis software: Provides an accompanying R package to access and analyze the standardized datasets.
• Reproducibility and transparency: Emphasizes consistent metadata and standardized data formatting to support reproducible analyses and synthesis.

Scientific Applications:

• Earth sciences research: Enables quantitative analysis of soil-atmosphere greenhouse gas exchange across sites and time scales.
• Climate-change syntheses: Supports multi-site syntheses of soil CO2 and CH4 fluxes for regional to global assessments.
• Model evaluation: Provides standardized observational data for testing and benchmarking ecosystem and biogeochemical models of soil respiration and methane flux.
• Carbon-cycle studies: Facilitates investigations into soil carbon storage, flux dynamics, and implications for global carbon cycling.

Methodology:

Contributed measurements are mapped to a single consistent standard for uniform metadata and data quality, and an accompanying R package provides functions to access and analyze the standardized datasets.