Duke Universitys Forest-Atmosphere Carbon Transfer and Storage (FACTS-1) facility is a loblolly pine stand located in the Blackwood Division of Duke Forest, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA. This facility hosted the Free Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment (FACE) experiment, a long term global change ecology project that provided 200 µmol mol-1 above ambient CO2 to research plots within the pine stand. FACE consisted of 4 free-air CO2 enriched plots and 4 control or ambient plots. Each of these 8 plots was bisected by an impermeable, underground barrier, and randomly selected halves were fertilized with 11.2 g N m-2 y-1 nitrogen from pellet ammonium nitrate. The FACE project began in August 1996 and entered its final stage in October 2010, when the CO2 enrichment was switched off and the Final Harvest began. This Harvest involved the collection of all biomass from half of each plot.
Generally, aboveground biomass includes both loblolly pine and various hardwood species. Pine samples include woody material both by branch height and whole tree, needles by cohort and flush, and cones. Cross sections of two pines, 1 dominant and 1 suppressed, were taken every 4 meters along the trunk. Taproots of these trees were also excavated. Hardwood samples include leaves and wood from all trees under 8 cm DBH and branches, leaves, and cross sections for trees over 8 cm DBH. A more detailed description of the available material can be found at http://face.env.duke.edu/HarvestMaterialAvailable.xls This biomass is currently available for use upon request. The funding agency (DOE) requires that requests are submitted only by the person in charge of a project (the Principal Investigator, or PI), and that post-docs and graduate students should be listed as co-investigators. Your request should include your contact information, proposal title, funding agency or institution (if applicable), the type of study, and information regarding the proposal (question addressed, experimental protocol, and planned data use). Shipping expenses for requested samples are the responsibility of the recipient. All requests should be submitted to the Duke FACE Facility (http://face.env.duke.edu/form.cfm) or e-mailed to Ram Oren ([email protected]).
