And thanks to its open-source code, anyone with access to a\nhandheld Android or tablet who wants to measure flux\u2014that is, how much carbon\ndioxide or water is respired by plants or soil over a given time period\u2014can\ntake Flux Puppy for a spin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new ecological app is the brain-pup of a team of\nundergraduate researchers who worked with Mariah Carbone<\/strong> and Andrew Richardson <\/strong>in the\nCenter for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss) and School of Informatics,\nComputing, and Cyber Systems (SICCS) at Northern Arizona University. The\nfour undergraduates\u2014Andrew Greene<\/strong>, Samuel Beals<\/strong>, James Beasley<\/strong> and Joseph\nElroy<\/strong>\u2014developed the app as their SICCS senior capstone project. Like all\ngood apps, this one makes a task that was once complicated or cumbersome more\nuser-friendly, portable and therefore better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Collecting flux data in the field\ncan be a pain: many of the instruments used to measure carbon flux only talk to\nWindows operating systems via expensive software and don\u2019t have data processing\nor metadata capabilities. Enter Flux Puppy, whose improvements\u2014along with not\nrequiring one to drag their laptop into the forest\u2014offers real time data processing,\nmetadata and wireless data transfer functionality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWorking on Flux Puppy, I got a\ncomplete experience designing a software product that worked by the end of the\nyear,\u201d said Greene, one of the undergraduate coauthors on the project. \u201cIt was\nso exciting to know we were building new software that would impact many\necologists and people outside the Carbone lab.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere was a lot of enthusiasm for Flux Puppy in the lab,\u201d\nCarbone said. \u201cI could\nsend an email about Flux Puppy on a Saturday and get five replies immediately because\neveryone was just so into working on this tool.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n For her, this lab-wide collaboration was exciting to watch. Greene\nand the other seniors made the app functional by the time they left NAU. Rademacher\ntested it in the field the following summer and suggested ways to make it\nbetter. Based on these recommendations and other field tests, postdocs Bijan Seyednasrollah<\/strong> and David Basler<\/strong> reworked and tweaked the\ncode, and lab manager Jim LeMoine<\/strong> tested\nit again and worked with the undergraduates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEveryone worked together to get the\nPuppy up and running,\u201d Carbone said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what\u2019s with the name? \u201cFlux Puppy\u201d is a play on an early\nflux measurement instrument, the LI-800 Gashound, whose logo was a wag-tailed bloodhound\nsniffing a CO2 molecule. No one uses an 800 anymore, Carbone said, but it\u2019s a nod\nto those ecologists who were trained on a Gashound and a bridge between two\ngenerations of the carbon cycling community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Community is\ncentral to Carbone\u2019s approach. In fact, Flux Puppy\u2019s best trick might be that\nit is open-source, which means that anyone can download the code in order to customize\nit to their needs or make it better. The team\u2019s paper on Flux Puppy, which\nappears in the most recent issue of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology<\/em><\/a>,also offers\ninstructions on how to build your own inexpensive flux instrument. That\u2019s\nimportant, Carbone said, because it invites to ecosystem science people who\ndon\u2019t necessarily have access to a researcher or academic mentor who can teach\nthem how to build a flux measurement tool. And broadening the community of scientists\ninterested in knowing where the carbon is going is vital to Carbone and her\nteam\u2019s research philosophy. As the authors write, \u201cWe encourage the\ncommunity to take Flux Puppy for a walk and contribute to\ndevelopment and improvement of the code.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Flux](\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wordpresst\/uploads\/sites\/153\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/FluxPuppy_harvardforest_4.23.19-225x300.jpg\")
![\"NAU](\"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wordpresst\/uploads\/sites\/153\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/NAU_primary-281_3514-1-e1536853679171.png\")
<\/figure>