EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY'S EDDY COVARIANCE SYSTEM

About EdiSol

The history of EdiSol as a project goes back to the late 1980's and the need to develop a real-time program for the FIFE89 project in Kansas. The initiators of the first program were John Moncrieff (JBM) and Jon Massheder (JMM). The need to standardise on software and hardware for the HAPEX-Sahel project in Niger in 1992 led us to start the development of what we now regard as EdiSol proper. We developed the software in collaboration with a number of European partners specifically so that we could all use the same code in the HAPEX-Sahel experiment. EdiBox was developed in response to the need to eliminate field errors caused by the usual 'rats nest' of wiring and Steve Scott was mainly responsible for the design of EdiBox. In the period 1999-2004, EdiBox was produced under licence by ICOM-SCOTTECH, an elecronics company in the Scottish Borders to meet the demand for the systems. We no longer actively promote the system for sale. The software continues to be developed in-house, particularly the post-processor package written by Dr Robert Clement - 'EdiRe'. EdiSol for Windows was written by JMM. Steve Scott left in 1999 to work in Indiana; JMM is now working for Simile but continues to 'dabble' with Edisol for Windows as time permits and he has been playing with a version that would work with Campbell CSAT3 sonic anemometers and CR23X loggers; this is EdiCSAT. Whilst EdiCSAT is being used by us at one of our field sites in the north of England, it would require more programming effort to get it as stable as either the DOS or Windows verion of EdiSol.

EdiSol has users all over the world and has been used in experiments in the USA, Canada, France, Italy, Sweden, Holland, Malaysia, Germany, Iceland, Finland, Japan and China. EdiRE is used by about a third to one half of the flux stations currently operating. EdiSol and EdiRE are free for use by any group participating in FLUXNET.