2.2.2. Caatinga Site

Measurements were carried out on a site managed by the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), and the micrometeorological tower is part of the NOWCDCB (National Observatory of Water and Carbon Dynamics in the Caatinga Biome, Figure 1) monitoring network. The campaign comprised the period from 1 January 2014 to 31 July 2015. The tower is located in a preserved Caatinga segmen<sup>t</sup> (BR-CST) within the Pajeú river watershed (7◦5805.20"S, 38◦2302.62"W, 430 m in altitude) in Serra Talhada city, Pernambuco state, Northeast Brazil. According to Köppen's classification, the climate is semiarid (BSwh), with summer rainfalls occurring between December and May (85% of total precipitation) as reported by [27]. Mean annual precipitation is approximately 640 mm, and average air temperatures range from 23.1 to 26.7 ◦C [27]. Native species at the site are *Mimosa hostilis*, *Mimosa verrucosa* and *Croton sonderianus*, while *Anadenanthera macrocarpa*, *Spondias tuberosa*, *Caesalpinia pyramidalis*, and *Ziziphus joazeiro* can also be found, with a mean height of 8.0 m [27]. Rainfall was provided by a "Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia" (INMET) station near of site.
