Detecting nighttime inversions in the interior of a Douglas fir canopy

Despite the importance of forests in the water and carbon cycles, accurately measuring their contribution remains challenging, especially at night. During clear-sky nights current models and theories fail, as non-turbulent flows and spatial heterogeneity become more important. One of the standing issues is the ‘decoupling’ of the air masses...

Vapor plumes in a tropical wet forest: Spotting the invisible evaporation

Forest evaporation exports a vast amount of water vapor from land ecosystems into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, evaporation during rain events is neglected or considered of minor importance in dense ecosystems. Air convection moves the water vapor upwards leading to the formation of large invisible vapor plumes, while the identification of...

Decoupling of a Douglas fir canopy: A look into the subcanopy with continuous vertical temperature profiles

Complex ecosystems such as forests make accurately measuring atmospheric energy and matter fluxes difficult. One of the issues that can arise is that parts of the canopy and overlying atmosphere can be turbulently decoupled from each other, meaning that the vertical exchange of energy and matter is reduced or hampered. This complicates flux...

Contribution of understory evaporation in a tropical wet forest during the dry season

Tropical wet forests are complex ecosystems with a large number of plant species. These environments are characterized by a high water availability throughout the whole year and a complex canopy structure. However, how the different sections of the canopy contribute to total evaporation is poorly understood. The aim of this work is to...

Technical note: Using distributed temperature sensing for Bowen ratio evaporation measurements

Technical note: using Distributed Temperature Sensing for Bowen ratio evaporation measurements

Rapid improvements in the precision and spatial resolution of Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) technology now allows its use in hydrological and atmospheric sciences. Introduced by Euser [Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 18, 2021–2032 (2014)] is the use of DTS for measuring the Bowen ratio (BR-DTS), to estimate the sensible and latent heat flux....