Abstract ID: 662

LBA Fluxtower Sites: Vastly Diverse Samples of Amazonian Terrain

The LBA network of flux towers, one of the first established in the world, monitors the rainforest exchanges of carbon and energy between the canopy and the atmosphere over a significant range of climate regimes. Data comparison among those sites tend to emphasize the contrasts of climates, with terrain and forests physiognomy assumed to remain constant. We have overlaid bidimensional footprint analysis maps for upland rainforest flux towers in the LBA East-West transect with the new terrain classes maps produced by the height above the nearest drainage terrain descriptor (algorithm produced by our group). The terrain class composition (lowland waterlogged, lowland campinarana, upland slope and upland flat) for these sites vary considerably indicating a highly diverse mosaic of vegetation communities at the fluxtower sites. Still, for most wind conditions in daytime, only the terrain closest to the flux towers (a few hundred m to 1 km) is being significantly sampled, meaning that other areally important terrain classes located a bit farther from the towers are mostly overlooked. Other key forest structure, biomass and biodiversity variables are highly dependent on the landscape complexity, so the type of analysis we developed to match fluxtower footprints to source area terrain can be of use in planning fluxtower installation and relocations. But the most important use will be to instruct the multi site comparison studies in course now.

Session:  Carbon - What has been learned and what further can be learned from a network of eddy covariance towers in Amazonia?.

Presentation Type:  Oral