Marvin Klemme Range Research Station NEON - United States of America

Klemme Range Research Station is a relocatable field site and part of NEON's Southern Plains Domain 11. The 1,560-acre Klemme Range Research Station is a grassland site managed for livestock grazing and pasture, located in the middle of the Rolling Red Plains Resource Area. The Rolling Red Plains extends from south of the Red River to north of the Oklahoma/Kansas border consisting of approximately 9.4 million acres, which occupies a significant portion of Western Oklahoma excluding the Oklahoma Panhandle. NEON collects the standard suite of data at OAES, flux tower measurements and organismal data; however, data from this particular location supports greater understanding of land use change, climate change (particularly its role in multidecadal ENSO variability), and infectious disease and invasive species. Remote sensing surveys of this field site collect lidar, spectrometer and high-resolution RGB camera data. The flux/meteorological tower at this site is 81’ with 5 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 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 soil data.