# AgroFlux: A Spatial-Temporal Benchmark for Carbon and Nitrogen Flux Prediction in Agricultural Ecosystems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01614 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01614/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [TimesNet: Temporal 2D-Variation Modeling for General Time Series Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02186/) (2022)
- [iTransformer: Inverted Transformers Are Effective for Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06625/) (2023)
- [Temporal Convolutional Networks for Action Segmentation and Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05267/) (2016)
- [Deep Time Series Models: A Comprehensive Survey and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13278/) (2024)
- [A CNN-RNN Framework for Crop Yield Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.09045/) (2019)
- [EA-LSTM: Evolutionary Attention-based LSTM for Time Series Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.03760/) (2018)
- [Fields of The World: A Machine Learning Benchmark Dataset For Global Agricultural Field Boundary Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16252/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Role-Aware Conditional Inference for Spatiotemporal Ecosystem Carbon Flux Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03531/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Agroecosystem, which heavily influenced by human actions and accounts for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), plays a crucial role in mitigating global climate change and securing environmental sustainability. However, we can't manage what we can't measure. Accurately quantifying the pools and fluxes in the carbon, nutrient, and water nexus of the agroecosystem is therefore essential for understanding the underlying drivers of GHG and developing effective mitigation strategies. Conventional approaches like soil sampling, process-based models, and black-box machine learning models are facing challenges such as data sparsity, high spatiotemporal heterogeneity, and complex subsurface biogeochemical and physical processes. Developing new trustworthy approaches such as AI-empowered models, will require the AI-ready benchmark dataset and outlined protocols, which unfortunately do not exist. In this work, we introduce a first-of-its-kind spatial-temporal agroecosystem GHG benchmark dataset that integrates physics-based model simulations from Ecosys and DayCent with real-world observations from eddy covariance flux towers and controlled-environment facilities. We evaluate the performance of various sequential deep learning models on carbon and nitrogen flux prediction, including LSTM-based models, temporal CNN-based model, and Transformer-based models. Furthermore, we explored transfer learning to leverage simulated data to improve the generalization of deep learning models on real-world observations. Our benchmark dataset and evaluation framework contribute to the development of more accurate and scalable AI-driven agroecosystem models, advancing our understanding of ecosystem-climate interactions.