NEON-National Ecological Observatory Network

Building a user community at the interface between biotic ecosystems and the
atmosphere.
Dr. Javier Fochesatto, NEON Visiting Scientist (De. 01-15, 2015)
Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
Department of Atmospheric Sciences
Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Executive Summary
One of NEONs Grand Challenges is to provide user information related to large-scale areaaverage surface fluxes of heat, moisture and carbon (CO 2) from local, regional and up to
continental scales. This objective is of vital importance to the scientific community in terms of
monitoring and assessing the status and evolution of ecosystems, their resilience and feedbacks
to climate change and global warming. This evaluation is normally accomplished by means of
earth system models and climate models that normally reliably operate at grid scales from 30 to
100 km. The use of NEONs data in this spatial scale paradigm require to bridge the spatial gaps
between models and the actual observations. Local tower information can in fact be up-scaled
and the information needed is diverse and involves not only evaluation of surface properties,
atmospheric surface flow state, radiation processes as well as vegetation gradients. One of these
elements that actually play a key role across scales is the dynamic of the atmospheric layer
connecting the surface with the free atmosphere known as the atmospheric boundary layer
(ABL). The main ABL property is the ability to regulate and exchange scalars and momentum
between the actual surface and the free troposphere convolving the diurnal cycle response to all
surface and flow forcing previously mentioned. In principle, theoretical approximations based on
Monin-Obukhov Similarity Hypothesis allow for upscaling of surface fluxes; however, similarity
approximations are based in two very restricted conditions one of them at the surface (surface
homogeneity) and the other one on the flow (flow stationarity). These two properties can be
fulfilled sometimes at the local scale around the area where the flux tower operates. However as
the ABL diurnal cycle evolves as a results of the heat and momentum developed from the
interaction between the surface and the atmospheric flow the exchanges between the surface and
the free troposphere become dominated by the structure of turbulence and transport developed in
the ABL framework. Therefore real surface and flows impose ultimate restrictions on how well

the upscaling process can be representative of surface heterogeneities, flow accelerations,

vegetation gradients, sloping terrains, etc.
Therefore this report found necessary the need to initiate a scientific discussion and further
implementation of eventual extra set of observational data that would allow a comprehensive
dynamical representation of local NEON observations into the free troposphere in the long term
implementation across landforms and flows.

Supporting Documentation
To elaborate the present report the following review activities were carried out:
1) Survey of current capabilities of NEON in terms of monitoring surface turbulent fluxes of
heat, CO2, and scalar fluxes across landscapes, regions, and ecoclimatic zones.
2) Focus on NEONs atmospheric data products and deliverables, to highlight current
capabilities and identify knowledge gaps. The effort was focused on time and spatial scales
surface-layer fluxes and boundary-layer scalar transport.
3) Layout the primary scientific elements to develop a scientific user community of NEONs
capability in scalar surface fluxes and boundary-layer meteorology.
NEON data is thoroughly described and fully accessible in the website
http://data.neoninc.org/home. This report reviewed the NEON Fundamental Instrumental Unit
(FIU) set of instruments and data acquisition (i.e., ranges, sampling rate, data processing, etc)
including instrument configuration and organization on each NEON research site. Examining the
configuration of tower sites across Eco climatic zones it is concluded that each of NEON sites
has been organized to fully address the measurements of surface layer fluxes including the
necessary variables to determine the atmospheric flow characteristics and state including
surface/sky radiative properties. A summary of current measuring capabilities of NEON in terms
of atmospheric processes follows:
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thermodynamic state (air temperature, barometric pressure and relative humidity,

precipitation), atmospheric surface layer flow dynamic and state (wind speed and
direction sensors, stratification),

radiative fluxes (IR biological, SW direct and diffuse, net radiometer, PAR and PAR

quantum line and sun photometric data).

surface layer turbulent fluxes NEON present a single level tri-axial anemometer
combined with the IRGA sensor for heat, H2O and CO2 measurements.

When NEON data is examined across landscapes, ecoclimatic zones and regions it is concluded
that the set of measurements have been strategized to rigorously produce measurements under all
conditions at the atmospheric surface layer flow. This means that the selection of NEON sites
followed specific condition at the locality where the tower is intended to be installed and the
variability (e.g., roughness, vegetation type, sloping terrain, etc) of the landscape around the area
have been considered in such way that the measured variables can maximize their area
representation across the landscape.
However it is known that it is difficult to maintain similar aerodynamic and thermodynamic
properties across landscapes in special when we consider thermodynamic surface characteristics
(dry/wet soils), micro-topographies and area-average fluxes at large footprints ~km 2. This natural
landscape characteristics imposes restrictive conditions in terms of surface homogeneity and
flow stationarity which are the two conditions necessary to apply similarity hypothesis to express
local fluxes into large scale area-average fluxes. Nevertheless, it must be mentioned that this
problem is germane to all surface fluxes observations and modeling platforms since a unified and
unique theory of how to theoretically treat the heterogeneous surface is still non-existing. There
are however some practical considerations based on selecting a given height above which none
of the internal boundary layers developed by individual roughnesss patches can be
distinguished. This height is called the blending height and it is assumed to integrate at one
vertical height all fluxes from specific patches before agglomerating into the mixed layer (the
section of the ABL right above the atmospheric surface layer). However the concept of blending
height does not account for stratified layers and also is no longer valid when the surface layer
approaches a free convective regime.
To help overcome this problem of spatial representation and determining variable evolution
across several landscapes, NEON plans to develop airborne instrumentation including
hyperspectral imaging, topographic and waveform lidar. All of which combined with continuous

satellite remote sensing platforms will help in defining the site specific statistical properties of
vegetation and surface roughness variability and changes across landscape. When focusing on
specific surface turbulent fluxes of heat, moisture and carbon the combination of tower-based
data with airborne and satellite data will allow formulate mathematical approximations based on
multiparametric empirical statistical function to account for the across landscape fluxes
variability. This way the tower data combined with the empirical (site dedicated) statistical
functions will allow determining large scale area-average fluxes over a set of data measured at
local scale.
Nonetheless, there are some other aspects in the flux aggregation across heterogeneous and
complex landscape that come into play and account for locality and large area turbulence and
dynamic mechanisms that take place at the scale of the ABL. Thus in the developing of diurnal
fluxes there are variables that constraint the space-time variation of fluxes that aggregates into
upper level scales that are function of the diurnal cycle of the ABL. As an example when we
consider fluxes in heterogeneous surfaces under clear skies conditions the local fluxes of heat
and momentum aim the development and deepening of the convective boundary layer (CBL)
through the day. However as the CBL deepens into the atmosphere the fluxes in upper level
(above the atmospheric surface layer) detach from specific features of the surface. This way the
concentration of any particular scalar that is projected into the mixed-layer will be function of
local fluxes but simultaneously it will also depend on how the turbulence distribute across space,
the dynamic and stability of the flow, surface roughness and thermodynamic properties across
the terrain. In other words, as the CBL deepens into the atmosphere it covers a spatial region that
involves not only the local source of fluxes but also adjacent regions that also flux into the same
CBL flow. Nevertheless, under some specific surface and flow conditions vertical flux profiles
can be obtained based on similarity hypothesis. In this case the surface heat fluxes can be related
to heat fluxes atop of the mixed layer (also known as base of the thermal inversion layer) as
function of mathematical expression including Richardson number for example. In this
framework when extensions of the local surface fluxes across the landscape are considered it
must be indicated that the CBL-top will apply a time and space modulation to the aggregated
fluxes. For example, it is well known that when the ABL is well-developed there are region
across space in the ABL flow that are dominated by updraft convective currents and others where
downward flows dominate. This features of the ABL diurnal cycle across space that depends on

the combined action of surface processes and atmospheric flow dynamic is crucial to understand
the transition of surface fluxes values to concentrations in the free-atmosphere after being
processed and integrated by the ABL flow.
Several examples demonstrated over different landscapes the effect of heterogeneous surfaces on
the flux integration. For example in coniferous boreal forest (albedo ~ 0.18) on discontinuous
permafrost the CBL in clear skies can reach 1 to 2 km height while surface fluxes can diverge in
50 Wm-2 over distances ~600 m therefore smaller than the actual height of the ABL (Starkenburg
et al., 2015). For the same site and cases it was demonstrated that the local eddy-covariance
fluxes captures ~80% on average of the measured large scale boundary layer flux obtained based
on Large Aperture Scintillometer (LAS) across the landscape ~1.4 km path. In this case a local
flux parameterization as function of ABL fluxes was obtained as function of the Obukhov Length
(L), a scaler that account for the dynamic state of the ABL being measured locally at the eddycovariance tower. In this case the ratio between local scale fluxes and large scale fluxes was
expressed based on empirical function of 1/L (Starkenburg et al., 2015). It must be emphasized
that at altitudes below the Obukhov Length (L) scale shear production of turbulent kinetic energy
dominates over buoyant production of turbulence. In these mentioned calculations it was
considered a LAS-inversion process free of computational errors (Gruber and Fochesatto, 2013)
and also sensitivity functions associated to topographic height variations across the Optical path
(Gruber et al., 2014) as well as scrutinized the flow for the eventual presence of small scale
drainage or channeling flows across the landscape (Fochesatto et al., 2013) which may bias
significantly the relationship between local and large scale area-average fluxes.
In order to effectively interface NEON tower data to modeling activities including for example
mesoscale models, earth system models, GCM coupled to CLM models, downscaling of climate
model outputs; it seems necessary, to have on site a variable that can be accessible by models
reasonably well at a giving spatial scale. In this case it appears appropriate to indicate that it
would be optimal to consider the continuous measurements of the ABL structure and dynamics
on the area where the NEON measurements are being carried out. It must also be stressed that
this variable is not common in micrometeorological analysis and is the focus of analysis of a
scientific community mainly dedicated to ABL-research. In this community research on ABLs

covers from microscale turbulence analysis to mesoscale and regional flows as well coupling of
fluxes to all other upper level scales. Therefore it seems appropriate that as part of building a
new user community, we plan to broadly engage members of the ABL research community, and
propose a workshop (i.e., NSF RCN) to refine the scope of this problem; collect community
inputs and generate new opportunities through NEON platform.
Demonstrating research groups NCAR to link to Ecological community
Next steps in workshop
This is the chain of elements:
Grand challenge
Supporting document
Justify and Build Community
Solution white paper proposals
References
Potential Community
NCAR, modelers and observational
NOAA researchers
Harvard
Berkeley labs
CSU-Denning
Representatives of Euro-Carbon
ISPRA
ICOS
Czech-Globe.
Companies: Scintec AG; Sigma Space