Portable Flux Tower Deployments Field Campaign Report
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- University of Nebraska-Lincoln
In May of 2015, a portable eddy covariance flux tower was installed by David Billesbach at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility’s Southern Great Plains (SGP) observatory E-32 extended facility west of Medford, Oklahoma. The goal of this deployment was to provide data sets that could be used to test land-atmosphere models and surface forcing from the SGP region. This site was chosen as being underrepresented in current data inventories. In January of 2016, a second portable flux system was installed (by Billesbach and Sebastien Biraud) in a field at the southeast corner of the intersection of Oklahoma highways 11 and 74 (also near Medford and designated as site 74). This site was chosen because it was to be planted in grain sorghum (milo) which is also an underrepresented crop. A secondary goal for this deployment was to refine the operational parameters of the newly rebuilt portable eddy correlation flux systems (ECOR), which incorporate several new sensors. These new measurements were designed to accommodate more advanced modeling and integration with remote-sensing products such as normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), photochemical reflectance index (PRI), and diffuse solar radiation. Another secondary goal was to assess how well surface energy components—sensible heat flux (H) and latent heat flux (LE)—measured by ECOR and energy balance Bowen ratio (EBBR) instruments could be compared. Operations were terminated at the E-32 site in June of 2017 and Billesbach removed the equipment from the site. Operations at site 74 were terminated in October of 2017 and Billesbach (with assistance from SGP-Central Facility personnel) again removed the equipment from the field. The most notable event at the E-32 site was the retrenching of site power. This operation opened a wide gap in the normally grass-covered footprint of our optical sensors. We are still evaluating the effects that the bare soil had on our NDVI and PRI data. At site 74, we learned after germination that soy beans instead of grain sorghum had been planted for the second (2017) growing season.
- Research Organization:
- DOE Office of Science Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- Contributing Organization:
- University of Nebraska-Lincoln
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-ACO5-7601830
- OSTI ID:
- 1454267
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/SC-ARM-18-022
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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