Discovery and availability¶

Three tools answer "which towers, and what data do they have?" They read the AmeriFlux site catalog and availability lists, which need no account, and work over stdio and HTTP alike. Inputs and result fields are in the Tool reference.

One catalog for three collections¶

ameriflux-mcp merges three lists into one catalog¹, the same data the AmeriFlux site search³ shows:

A tower in several lists is one site (US-Ha1 is in ameriflux and fluxnet2015). Sites only in a FLUXNET list, such as DE-Tha, carry the sparser FLUXNET fields. The catalog is cached for six hours, and on stdio also on disk, so a restarted server does not reload it².

Naming a site¶

Every site or sites argument accepts:

• a site ID in any case: US-Ha1, us-ha1;
• a NEON site code: SRER is US-xSR;
• a FLUXNET2015 ID renamed after the release: DK-ZaF is GL-ZaF (with a note);
• a site name: Santa Rita, Mayberry Wetland.

Each interpretation is echoed in resolved. A name that fits several sites fails with ambiguous_input and lists them (Harvard Forest gives US-Ha1, US-Ha2, US-Ha3, …): pick one and call again.

amf_search_sites¶

Filters combine (every filter must hold): words in the ID, name, place, NEON code or networks (prefixes count: harv); collection; product and policy; IGBP class; Köppen climate (prefixes: B is every dry climate); country (code as in site IDs, or name); state or province; tower status; member network (NEON, LTER, Phenocam, …); a bounding box or near a point; data years overlapping a window, or at least min_years; measured BASE variables (FCH4); flux gas species (CH4).

Each site comes with its years per product, its policy and its member networks; facets count every match by collection, IGBP, country, policy and status, so you can see the shape of a large result before paging through it.

{"tool": "amf_search_sites", "arguments": {"network": ["NEON"], "igbp": ["GRA"]}}
{"tool": "amf_search_sites", "arguments": {"near": {"latitude": 34.36, "longitude": -106.7, "radius_km": 60}}}
{"tool": "amf_search_sites", "arguments": {"collection": "fluxnet2015", "policy": "TIER2"}}

amf_get_site¶

One site, with the ecosystem and climate described in AmeriFlux's own words (from the vocabularies), the policy and what it asks of you, DOIs, years per product, team (names, roles, institutions), measured BASE variables and links to other networks:

• NEON: for NEON towers, the NEON site code and NEON's own flux product, DP4.00200.001, with a next step for the NEON MCP server.
• LTER: for sites in the LTER crosswalk, the LTER site and its EDI scope, with a next step for the EDI MCP server. The crosswalk is curated and marked draft; each link says whether it comes from the upstream LTER tag or the site name.

Team emails are withheld unless you ask for contacts and the server's operator enabled privacy.allow_contact_emails (Configuration).

amf_get_availability¶

The years each site has per product, from AmeriFlux's availability lists:

Without a policy, every row is labelled with the policy its data are actually shared under. LEGACY and TIER2 lists are supersets of the CC-BY lists (a CC-BY site may also be used under the stricter terms), so asking for policy="LEGACY" returns every site, while the default labels US-Ha1 CCBY4.0 and CA-Let LEGACY.

For the sites you name, the result also lists:

• emptySites: requested sites without data for a product, and why (a Legacy site has no FLUXNET product; RU-Sam has no Tier One years; no data in your year window);
• policyVerdict: the policy the selection must follow per product, with its obligations: mixing CC-BY and Legacy sites means Legacy, mixing tiers means Tier Two;
• combinedObligations: every obligation once, across collections.

An impossible product and policy pair (FLUXNET under LEGACY, BASE-BADM under TIER2) fails with invalid_argument before any request: the AmeriFlux API would answer it with empty rows rather than an error.

Resources¶