scholarly journals Source partitioning of H<sub>2</sub>O and CO<sub>2</sub> fluxes based on high-frequency eddy covariance data: a comparison between study sites

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 1111-1132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Klosterhalfen ◽  
Alexander Graf ◽  
Nicolas Brüggemann ◽  
Clemens Drüe ◽  
Odilia Esser ◽  
...  

Abstract. For an assessment of the roles of soil and vegetation in the climate system, a further understanding of the flux components of H2O and CO2 (e.g., transpiration, soil respiration) and their interaction with physical conditions and physiological functioning of plants and ecosystems is necessary. To obtain magnitudes of these flux components, we applied source partitioning approaches after Scanlon and Kustas (2010; SK10) and after Thomas et al. (2008; TH08) to high-frequency eddy covariance measurements of 12 study sites covering different ecosystems (croplands, grasslands, and forests) in different climatic regions. Both partitioning methods are based on higher-order statistics of the H2O and CO2 fluctuations, but proceed differently to estimate transpiration, evaporation, net primary production, and soil respiration. We compared and evaluated the partitioning results obtained with SK10 and TH08, including slight modifications of both approaches. Further, we analyzed the interrelations among the performance of the partitioning methods, turbulence characteristics, and site characteristics (such as plant cover type, canopy height, canopy density, and measurement height). We were able to identify characteristics of a data set that are prerequisites for adequate performance of the partitioning methods. SK10 had the tendency to overestimate and TH08 to underestimate soil flux components. For both methods, the partitioning of CO2 fluxes was less robust than for H2O fluxes. Results derived with SK10 showed relatively large dependencies on estimated water use efficiency (WUE) at the leaf level, which is a required input. Measurements of outgoing longwave radiation used for the estimation of foliage temperature (used in WUE) could slightly increase the quality of the partitioning results. A modification of the TH08 approach, by applying a cluster analysis for the conditional sampling of respiration–evaporation events, performed satisfactorily, but did not result in significant advantages compared to the original method versions developed by Thomas et al. (2008). The performance of each partitioning approach was dependent on meteorological conditions, plant development, canopy height, canopy density, and measurement height. Foremost, the performance of SK10 correlated negatively with the ratio between measurement height and canopy height. The performance of TH08 was more dependent on canopy height and leaf area index. In general, all site characteristics that increase dissimilarities between scalars appeared to enhance partitioning performance for SK10 and TH08.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Klosterhalfen ◽  
Alexander Graf ◽  
Nicolas Brüggemann ◽  
Clemens Drüe ◽  
Odilia Esser ◽  
...  

Abstract. For an assessment of the role of soil and vegetation in the climate system, a further understanding of the flux components of H2O and CO2 (e.g., transpiration, soil respiration) and their interaction with physical conditions and physiological functioning of plants and ecosystems is necessary. To obtain magnitudes of these flux components, we applied the source partitioning approaches after Scanlon and Kustas (2010; SK10) and after Thomas et al. (2008; TH08) to high frequency eddy covariance measurements of twelve study sites including various ecosystems (croplands, grasslands, and forests) in a number of countries. Both partitioning methods are based on higher-order statistics of the H2O and CO2 fluctuations, but proceed differently to estimate transpiration, evaporation, net primary production, and soil respiration. We compared and evaluated the partitioning results obtained with SK10 and TH08 including slight modifications of both approaches. Further, we analyzed the interrelations between turbulence characteristics, site characteristics (such as plant cover type, canopy height, canopy density and measurement height), and performance of the partitioning methods. We could identify characteristics of a data set as prerequisite for a sufficient performance of the partitioning methods. SK10 had the tendency to overestimate and TH08 to underestimate soil flux components. For both methods, the partitioning of CO2 fluxes was more irregular than of H2O fluxes. Results derived with SK10 showed relatively large dependencies on estimated water use efficiency (WUE) at leaf-level, which is needed as an input. Measurements of outgoing longwave radiation used for the estimation of foliage temperature and WUE could slightly increase the quality of the partitioning results. A modification of the TH08 approach, by applying a cluster analysis for the conditional sampling of respiration/evaporation events, performed satisfactorily, but did not result in significant advantages compared to the other method versions (developed by Thomas et al., 2008). The performance of each partitioning approach was dependent on meteorological conditions, plant development, canopy height, canopy density, and measurement height. Foremost, the performance of SK10 correlated negatively with the ratio between measurement and canopy height. The performance of TH08 was more dependent on canopy height and leaf area index. It was found, that all site characteristics which increase dissimilarities between scalars enhance partitioning performance for SK10 and TH08.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiliang Song ◽  
Yihao Zhu ◽  
Weifeng Chen

AbstractThe soil carbon (C) pools in coastal wetlands are known as “blue C” and have been damaged extensively owing to climate change and land reclamation. Because soil respiration (RS) is the primary mechanism through which soil carbon is released into the atmosphere at a global scale, investigating the dynamic characteristics of the soil respiration rate in reclaimed coastal wetlands is necessary to understand its important role in maintaining the global C cycle. In the present study, seasonal and diurnal changes in soil respiration were monitored in one bare wetland (CK) and two reclaimed wetlands (CT, a cotton monoculture pattern, and WM, a wheat–maize continuous cropping pattern) in the Yellow River Delta. At the diurnal scale, the RS at the three study sites displayed single-peak curves, with the lowest values occurring at midnight (00:00 a.m.) and the highest values occurring at midday (12:00 a.m.). At the seasonal scale, the mean diurnal RS of the CK, CT and WM in April was 0.24, 0.26 and 0.79 μmol CO2 m−2 s−1, and it increased to a peak in August for these areas. Bare wetland conversion to croplands significantly elevated the soil organic carbon (SOC) pool. The magnitude of the RS was significantly different at the three sites, and the yearly total amounts of CO2 efflux were 375, 513 and 944 g CO2·m−2 for the CK, CT and WM, respectively. At the three study sites, the surface soil temperature had a significant and positive relationship to the RS at both the diurnal and seasonal scales, and it accounted for 20–52% of the seasonal variation in the daytime RS. The soil water content showed a significant but negative relationship to the RS on diurnal scale only at the CK site, while it significantly increased with the RS on seasonal scale at all study sites. Although the RS showed a noticeable relationship to the combination of soil temperature and water content, the synergic effects of these two environment factors were not much higher than the individual effects. In addition, the correlation analysis showed that the RS was also influenced by the soil physico-chemical properties and that the soil total nitrogen had a closer positive relationship to the RS than the other nutrients, indicating that the soil nitrogen content plays a more important role in promoting carbon loss.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Mauder ◽  
Andreas Ibrom ◽  
Luise Wanner ◽  
Frederik De Roo ◽  
Peter Brugger ◽  
...  

Abstract. The eddy-covariance method provides the most direct estimates for fluxes between ecosystems and the atmosphere. However, dispersive fluxes can occur in the presence of secondary circulations, which can inherently not be captured by such single-tower measurements. In this study, we present options to correct local flux measurements for such large-scale transport based on a non-local parametric model that has been developed from a set of idealized LES runs for three real-world sites. The test sites DK-Sor, DE-Fen, and DE-Gwg, represent typical conditions in the mid-latitudes with different measurement height, different terrain complexity and different landscape-scale heterogeneity. Different ways to determine the boundary-layer height, which is a necessary input variable for modelling the dispersive fluxes, are applied, either from operational radio-soundings and local in-situ measurements for the flat site or from backscatter-intensity profile obtained from collocated ceilometers for the two sites in complex terrain. The adjusted total fluxes are evaluated by assessing the improvement in energy balance closure and by comparing the resulting latent heat fluxes with evapotranspiration rates from nearby lysimeters. The results show that not only the accuracy of the flux estimates is improved but also the precision, which is indicated by RMSE values that are reduced by approximately 50 %. Nevertheless, it needs to be clear that this method is intended to correct for a bias in eddy-covariance measurements due to the presence of large-scale dispersive fluxes. Other reasons potentially causing a systematic under- or overestimation, such as low-pass filtering effects and missing storage terms, still need to be considered and minimized as much as possible. Moreover, additional transport induced by surface heterogeneities is not considered.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 771-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie C. Pennington ◽  
Nate G. McDowell ◽  
J. Patrick Megonigal ◽  
James C. Stegen ◽  
Ben Bond-Lamberty

Abstract. Soil respiration (Rs), the flow of CO2 from the soil surface to the atmosphere, is one of the largest carbon fluxes in the terrestrial biosphere. The spatial variability of Rs is both large and poorly understood, limiting our ability to robustly scale it in space. One factor in Rs spatial variability is the autotrophic contribution from plant roots, but it is uncertain how the presence of plants affects the magnitude and temperature sensitivity of Rs. This study used 1 year of Rs measurements to examine the effect of localized basal area on Rs in the growing and dormant seasons, as well as during moisture-limited times, in a temperate, coastal, deciduous forest in eastern Maryland, USA. In a linear mixed-effects model, tree basal area within a 5 m radius (BA5) exerted a significant positive effect on the temperature sensitivity of soil respiration. Soil moisture was the dominant control on Rs during the dry portions of the year, while soil moisture, temperature, and BA5 all exerted significant effects on Rs in wetter periods. Our results suggest that autotrophic respiration is more sensitive to temperature than heterotrophic respiration at these sites, although we did not measure these source fluxes directly, and that soil respiration is highly moisture sensitive, even in a record-rainfall year. The Rs flux magnitudes (0.46–15.0 µmol m−2 s−1) and variability (coefficient of variability 10 %–23 % across plots) observed in this study were comparable to values observed in similar forests. Six Rs observations would be required in order to estimate the mean across all study sites to within 50 %, and 518 would be required in order to estimate it to within 5 %, with 95 % confidence. A better understanding of the spatial interactions between plants and microbes, as well as the strength and speed of above- and belowground coupling, is necessary to link these processes with large-scale soil-to-atmosphere C fluxes.


2013 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 293-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Masseroni ◽  
C. Corbari ◽  
A. Ceppi ◽  
C. Gandolfi ◽  
M. Mancini

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 6059-6078 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Moravek ◽  
Saumya Singh ◽  
Elizabeth Pattey ◽  
Luc Pelletier ◽  
Jennifer G. Murphy

Abstract. Measurements of the surface–atmosphere exchange of ammonia (NH3) are necessary to study the emission and deposition processes of NH3 from managed and natural ecosystems. The eddy covariance technique, which is the most direct method for trace gas exchange measurements at the ecosystem level, requires trace gas detection at a fast sample frequency and high precision. In the past, the major limitation for measuring NH3 eddy covariance fluxes has been the slow time response of NH3 measurements due to NH3 adsorption on instrument surfaces. While high-frequency attenuation correction methods are used, large uncertainties in these corrections still exist, which are mainly due to the lack of understanding of the processes that govern the time response. We measured NH3 fluxes over a corn crop field using a quantum cascade laser spectrometer (QCL) that enables measurements of NH3 at a 10 Hz measurement frequency. The 5-month measurement period covered a large range of environmental conditions that included both periods of NH3 emission and deposition and allowed us to investigate the time response controlling parameters under field conditions. Without high-frequency loss correction, the median daytime NH3 flux was 8.59 ng m−2 s−1 during emission and −19.87 ng m−2 s−1 during deposition periods, with a median daytime random flux error of 1.61 ng m−2 s−1. The overall median flux detection limit was 2.15 ng m−2 s−1, leading to only 11.6 % of valid flux data below the detection limit. From the flux attenuation analysis, we determined a median flux loss of 17 % using the ogive method. No correlations of the flux loss with environmental or analyser parameters (such as humidity or inlet ageing) were found, which was attributed to the uncertainties in the ogive method. Therefore, we propose a new method that simulates the flux loss by using the analyser time response that is determined frequently over the course of the measurement campaign. A correction that uses as a function of the horizontal wind speed and the time response is formulated which accounts for surface ageing and contamination over the course of the experiment. Using this method, the median flux loss was calculated to be 46 %, which was substantially higher than with the ogive method.


2006 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 5329-5355 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Ammann ◽  
A. Brunner ◽  
C. Spirig ◽  
A. Neftel

Abstract. The most direct approach for measuring the exchange of biogenic volatile organic compounds between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere is the eddy covariance technique. It has been applied several times in the last few years using fast response proton-transfer-reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS). We present an independent validation of this technique by applying it to measure the water vapour flux in comparison to a common reference system comprising an infra-red gas analyser (IRGA). Water vapour was detected in the PTR-MS at mass 37 (atomic mass units) corresponding to the cluster ion H3O+·H2O. During a five-week field campaign at a grassland site, we obtained a non-linear but stable calibration function between the mass 37 signal and the reference water vapour concentration. With a correction of the high-frequency damping loss based on empirical ogive analysis, the eddy covariance water vapour flux obtained with the PTR-MS showed a very good agreement with the flux of the reference system. The application of the empirical ogive method for high-frequency correction led to significantly better results than using a correction based on theoretical spectral transfer functions. This finding is attributed to adsorption effects on the tube walls that are presently not included in the theoretical correction approach.


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