Program

FLUXNET is blending art and science to empower society to feel Earth system dynamics.

fluxART is a NSF-funded artist in residence program, offered for the first time in 2024-25 and projects were featured in the Currents Exhibit at the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts (PRAx), 22 January - 7 March 2026.

In a yearlong residency, fluxART invited artists to engage with FLUXNET scientists, the ecosystems they study, and the datasets offered by the global network, revealing how unexpected beauty can emerge from the concept of flux and transform our relationship with environmental change.

Using creative inquiry and curiosity-driven exploration, they explored climate change, drought and fire disturbances, the renewing rhythms of landscapes, and the often invisible processes that sustain life on Earth – turning flux science into stories and embodied experiences of nature’s resilience.

Why fluxART?

The bridge between scientific advances, healthy ecosystems, and climate action is constructed through our collective imagination and calls for collective healing. This includes how scientists, artists, and the public experience Earth system science and relate to the complexities and uncertainties of the biosphere. While both scientists and artists share a creative curiosity to observe and interpret how the world works, scientific outreach efforts often fail to lead society to fully feel and understand environmental change in a way that is empowering. This in turn limits the segment of the population that is inspired by science and driven to contribute to sustainable futures.

To break these barriers and transform climate imaginaries and environmental futures, the fluxART, initiative aims to contemplate this biosphere’s breath and reimagine our relationship with environmental change – both to illuminate flux science in the general public’s experience and to strengthen communication between academics and society toward more actionable research.

What is FLUXNET?

Our understanding of climate change depends on our understanding of ecosystem fluxes—how carbon, water, and energy move between the biosphere and the atmosphere. These fluxes are regulated by ecosystem processes including turbulent transport of mass and energy, evapotranspiration, photosynthesis and soil respiration, and are also affected by human activities and natural disturbances.

Scientists around the world have set up nearly 1,000 towers instrumented to constantly collect data about carbon, water, and energy fluxes – they are observing how the biosphere breathes. The key measurement technique used to collect these flux data is called eddy covariance. It is the gold standard to measure total fluxes at the ecosystem scale without probing every plant and inch of soil on the landscape. All of this data is shared through a global ‘network of networks’ called FLUXNET with a mission to facilitate collaboration and data sharing.

FLUXNET is much more than its datasets. It is a scientific community dedicated to understanding and communicating how ecosystems function and how Earth systems are changing. Having flux data in one place allows scientists to do big-picture thinking about climate change and develop models. Scientists also partner and engage with stakeholders to address applied environmental challenges with more local societal benefits. FLUXNET data and models are used for scientific discoveries and to inform local and international ecosystem management efforts, including climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies.

The fluxART is made possible through the FLUXNET Community Coordination Project supported by the National Science Foundation’s Accelerating Research through International Network-to-Network Collaborations program (NSF AccelNet Award 2113978) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (NIFA Award 2023-67012-40086).