FloraFlux – Flora Incognita

What is FloraFlux?

FloraFlux is a collaborative initiative aimed at collecting plant occurrence data from as many flux tower stations as possible, using automated plant identification through Flora Incognita. The project is designed to be inclusive, requiring no botanical expertise, minimizing time and costs for participants, and dedicated to data sharing. The idea is to raise precious plant occurrence data with low effort across the network to complement dedicated botanical vegetation surveys that are time-consuming and only available for a smaller number of sites. Collected data will be shared back with the FluxNet community to support broader collaboration.

Why FloraFlux Matters

FloraFlux will allow us to further explore the links between site-characteristics, biodiversity, species traits, and ecosystem fluxes and functioning. Vegetation parameters play a critical role in regulating carbon uptake, water cycling, and energy exchange of ecosystems (Reichstein, PNAS, Migliavacca et al. 2021, Gomarasca et al. XX, Musavi et al. XX), while predicting and understanding ecosystem functioning between sites remains a challenge. This is partly due to the scarcity of plant occurrence data at eddy covariance sites, which has limited network wide synthesis analyses, hindering global inference, and incorporation in large scale models and up-scaling approaches.

Recent studies highlight the value of massive un-structured plant occurrence data collected from species identification apps as a new data stream for a range of questions related to ecosystem functioning such as: 1) Mapping plant traits (Wolf et al., 2023); 2) assessing site-characteristics based on bioindication (Tautenhahn et al., in prep); And 3), and species phenology (Katal et al. 2023, Rzanny et al., 2024, Mora et al. 2024). As this new technology evolves, its potential to contribute to our understanding of ecosystem functioning and its connection with biodiversity will further increase.

How It Works: Simple and Scalable Implementation

FloraFlux has a very simple protocol: Participants are simply asked to “identify as many species as possible within the footprint of the eddy covariance tower” with Flora incognita and FloraFlux.

The Flora Incognita plant identification app, available freely on Google Play and the Apple Store, is a non-profit tool for automated plant identification with no advertisements. FloraFlux can simply be installed as an add-on to Flora Incognita by typing in a code or scanning a QR code. To participate in FloraFlux, users simply tag their plant observations with “#FloraFlux”, automatically piping their data to the collaborative project. A dropdown menu allows to provide optional, additional data that could be relevant for the project.

FloraFlux ensures that plant data collection is both flexible and scalable. It is based on three key principles:

Inclusive Flux Tower Site Community Effort: FloraFlux encourages participation at any flux tower site regardless of location, affiliation, or other.
Low Barrier to Entry: The tools are simple, allowing anyone with a smartphone to participate, independent of their technical or scientific background.
Adaptability: FloraFlux scales as participation and data grow. New features, and the optional collection of additional data can be added in future versions. As the AI for plant identification – Flora Incognita – further improves in the future the stored pictures can easily be re-identified using the improved AI.

Participant Effort: Contributing Made Easy

Little time investment of participants for plant data collection with FloraFlux is needed. The data collection can seamlessly be shared among multiple participants with different devices. No botanical knowledge is required, allowing technicians or student helpers to assist. Data collection can be easily done alongside with other tasks at the site or combined with teaching activities.

Participants can choose between a “Simple and Fast” and an “Advanced” data collection. , The advanced protocol may take approximately 10 additional minutes per campaign but is also accessible to non-botanists. The “Advanced” protocol is preferable over the “Simple and fast” protocol, but still very helpful for non-structured surveys. We encourage multiple campaigns per year to capture phenology, and the visibility of different species over the seasons.

We provide detailed instruction guidelines for using Flora Incognita and FloraFlux for plant identification, along with email support for questions (see also “Get Involved”).

Data Description: What We Collect

We will collect the following information through both the “Simple and Fast” and “Advanced” protocols:

Common Data for Both Protocols that are automatically recorded:

Images of Plant Species: Essential for future re-identification as the AI is likely to improve. Could be used in future to identify further information, as e.g. plant traits (REF).
Species Name (AI): Automated species name suggestions provided by Flora Incognita.
Coordinates: Useful for assigning tower IDs and determining footprint size, especially in areas with heterogeneous vegetation or multiple towers.
Date: Important for understanding species phenology and important if the project spans multiple years.
Email Address of Participant: Collected to invite participants to contribute to scientific efforts, e.g. data-set publication, and for communication in the context of on the FloraFlux

Additional Data for the “Advanced” Protocol (per observation, all optional, manual entries):

Fluxnet Site-Code: Participants can provide the FLUXNET site-code Otherwise, it will be matched based on the coordinates.
Species Name (Human): Participants may manually enter the species name if known.
Abundance: Participants estimate species local (approx.. 10 m radius) coverage using three categories: “rare”, “some individuals”, or “frequent”.
Health Status: Participants assess health status as “healthy” or “non-healthy”, “disturbed”.
Vegetation Layer: Participants estimate the vegetation layer as “surface” (mainly herbaceous), “intermediate” (mostly shrubs and bushes), and “tall” (trees)

Data Access: Open and Accessible for All

Data collected by participants through FloraFlux can be easily downloaded from their smartphones for personal or research use. Additionally, all community-collected data will be synthesized and published in an open-access format, with all participants invited to contribute.

Get Involved: Join the FloraFlux Community

FloraFlux will officially launch in Spring 2025. Here’s how you can get involved:

FloraFlux Newsletter: Stay updated with the latest news and developments by subscribing to our newsletter here.
FloraFlux Kickoff Meeting: We will hold a kickoff meeting for the project in February/March 2025. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive information about the meeting!
FloraFlux Instruction Guides: For detailed instructions on using Flora Incognita with FloraFlux, please refer to our PDF instruction guidelines here.
FloraFlux test phase: Who wants to test the functionality of FloraFlux or help with testing and developing the instructions guidelines and/or the functionality before spring 2025 can do this within the FloraTest Please get in contact with me for this option per email.