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Climate
Change Impacts Project -- Flux Measurement
Climate Change
is a world wide problem that affects every country on earth.
Understanding the processes and factors that control or
affect ecosystem response to climate change is essential to
mitigate impacts. Studying the regional to global radiation
balance, hydrologic energy, water and carbon dioxide fluxes
is important to understand effects of climate change on
ecosystem health and evolution, including impacts of invasive
species such as cheatgrass (bromus tectorum) in the western
US. The exchanges of water and carbon at the plant-atmosphere
interface are coupled through the active control of leaf and
needle stomata on the exchange of gas into or out of leaves
with the atmosphere and by effects of direct evaporation from
soil. Given the importance of carbon uptake and vapor
outputs, the ability to quantify the uptake is important,
particularly in large areas with significant capability to
assimilate carbon.
In
the upper Snake River system of Idaho, the most common
ecosystems, besides farms, are alpine forest, sage brush,
invasive cheatgrass and bunch grass. A primary goal of this
research is to contribute toward a better understanding and
methods of quantifying the magnitude, timing, distribution
and coupling of carbon, energy and water fluxes in these
three dominant natural ecosystems, including effects of
burning, and improve the accuracy of modeling sensible heat
flux (H) and evapotranspiration (ET) via land surface process
and remote sensing models.
Surface
energy flux(s) is important for understanding hydrologic
exchanges and energy exchange dynamics around the world. This
study looks at how these hydrologic exchanges and dynamics
are effected by climate change and differences in how
vegetation “meters” out scarce water. It is
especially important to determine the latent heat flux from
evapotranspiration (ET) to examine exchanges of energy and
mass between the land, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and
biosphere.
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