Santa Rita Experimental Range NEON - United States of America

Santa Rite Experimental Range (SRER) is the core terrestrial field site for NEON's Domain 14: Desert Southwest and is located in the Santa Rita Experimental Range which encompasses 21,000 hectares of upland Sonoran Desert, approximately 32 km south of Tucson, Arizona. Remote sensing surveys of this field site collect lidar, spectrometer and high-resolution RGB camera data. The flux/meteorological tower at this site is 26’ with 4 measurement levels. The tower top extends above the vegetation canopy to allow sensors mounted at the top and along the tower to capture the full profile of atmospheric conditions from the top of the vegetation canopy to the ground. The tower collects physical and chemical properties of atmosphere-related processes, such as humidity, wind, and net ecosystem gas exchange. Precipitation data are collected by a tipping bucket at the top of the tower and a series of throughfalls located in the soil array. This site has one phenocam on the top of the flux tower and one near the bottom of the tower. This site has five soil plots placed in an array within the airshed of the flux tower. Field ecologists collect the following types of observational data at this site: Terrestrial organisms (birds, ground beetles, mosquitoes, plants, small mammals, soil microbes, ticks), Biogeochemical data, and and soil data. Total data products planned for this site: 115