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Assessing scalar concentration footprint climatology and land surface impacts on tall-tower CO2 concentration measurements in the boreal forest of central Saskatchewan, Canada

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Abstract

Reducing the large uncertainties in current estimates of CO2 sources and sinks at regional scales (102–105 km2) is fundamental to improving our understanding of the terrestrial carbon cycle. Continuous high-precision CO2 concentration measurements on a tower within the planetary boundary layer contain information on regional carbon fluxes; however, its spatial representativeness is generally unknown. In this study, we developed a footprint model (Simple Analytical Footprint model based on Eulerian coordinates for scalar Concentration [SAFE-C]) and applied it to two CO2 concentration towers in central Canada: the East Trout Lake 106-m-tall tower (54°21′N, 104°59′W) and the Candle Lake 28-m-high tower (53°59′N, 105°07′W). Results show that the ETL tower’s annual concentration footprints were around 103–105 km2. The monthly footprint climatologies in summer were 1.5–2 times larger than in winter. The impacts of land surface carbon flux associated with heterogeneous distribution of vegetation types on the CO2 concentration measurements were different for the different heights, varied with a range of ±5 % to ±10 % among four heights. This study indicates that concentration footprint climatology analysis is important in interpreting the seasonal, annual and inter-annual variations of tower measured CO2 concentration data and is essential for comparing and scaling regional carbon flux estimates using top-down or bottom-up approaches.

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Acknowledgments

This research is supported by a research grant (2010CB950704) under the Global Change Program of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, the research grants (41071059 & 41271116) funded by the National Science Foundation of China, a Research Plan of LREIS (O88RA900KA), CAS, a research grant (2012ZD010) of Key Project for the Strategic Science Plan in IGSNRR, CAS, and “One hundred talents” program funded by Chinese Academy of Sciences. Contributions from the many researchers involved in data collection and in-kind support from many government and private agencies for each study site are also gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Science and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Baozhang Chen, Huifang Zhang, Dongjie Fu & Guang Xu

  2. Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 1Z4

    Baozhang Chen & Nicholas C. Coops

  3. Climate Research Division, Environment Canada, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3H 5 T4

    Douglas E. J. Worthy

  4. Biometeorology and Soil Physics Group, Faculty of Land and Food Systems, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 1Z4

    T. Andy Black

  5. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Baozhang Chen, Huifang Zhang, Dongjie Fu & Guang Xu

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  1. Baozhang Chen
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Correspondence to Baozhang Chen.

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Chen, B., Zhang, H., Coops, N.C. et al. Assessing scalar concentration footprint climatology and land surface impacts on tall-tower CO2 concentration measurements in the boreal forest of central Saskatchewan, Canada. Theor Appl Climatol 118, 115–132 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-013-1038-2

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