News 2008

Meetings

The Biomet Lab gave numerous presentations and posters at the AGU meeting in San Francisco.

Miller et al. Estimating the Contribution of Plant Groundwater Uptake to Total Evapotranspiration in a Semi-arid Oak Savanna

Chen et al. On Determining Wood Thermal Diffusivity and Probe Spacing for Sap Flow Measurements using In-Situ Heat Response Curves

Runkel et al. Scaling Leaves to Fluxes in a Well-Watered Saline Soil Peatlands

Detto et al. Using MODIS reflectance products to monitor wetness and methane fluxes and concentration in a managed temperate peatland in California

Osuna et al. How do temperature and drought limit photosynthesis? Discerning the answer with a seasonal study in a California Oak savanna

Sonnentag et al. Quantification of Canopy Structure and its Implication on Radiative Transfer, Carbon Dioxide and Energy Flux Densities in a Heterogeneous Oak-Grass Savanna Ecosystem at the Landscape Scale

Ma and Baldocchi. Measuring and Modeling Ecosystem Photosynthetic Productivity and Respiration in Responses to Climatic Fluctuations in the Past 60 Years at an Oak-Grass Savanna in California

Vargas and Baldocchi. Understanding Biophysical Regulations of Ecosystem and Soil Respiration Across Multiple Vegetation Types

Ryu et al. Characteristics of Land-Atmosphere Water Fluxes for Diverse Plant Functional Types in the FLUXNET Network

 

We also convened two sessions. One on Flux Networks in Biogeosciences: Experiments and Modeling and another on Soil Carbon Pools.

Meetings

DDB attended the AsiaFlux meeting in Seoul, Korea, representing FLUXNET and gave a presentation on FLUXNET.

Publications

Baldocchi, DD. Ma, S. Rambal, S., Misson, L., Ourcival, J-M, Limousin, J-M, Pereira, JS, Papale, D. On the Differential Advantages of Evergreenness and Deciduousness in Mediterranean Oak Woodlands: A Flux Perspective. Ecological Applications. submitted

Jackson, RB, JT Randerson, JG Canadell, RG Anderson, R Avissar, DD Baldocchi, GB Bonan, K Caldeira, NS Diffenbaugh, CB Field, BA Hungate, EG Jobbágy, LM Kueppers, MD Nosetto, DE Pataki 2008 Protecting climate with forests. Environmental Research Letters, 4, doi 10.1088/1748-9326/3/4/044006.

Staff News

Hideki Kobayashi joins the Biomet Lab for two years as a postdoc with a fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Hideki received his PhD from the Japanese Institute of Technology.

Meetings

Rodrigo Vargas, Siyan Ma, Oliver Sonnentag and Dennis Baldocchi attended the AmeriFlux annual meeting in Boulder. Rodrigo led a session on flux networks and Oliver presented a poster on LAI measurements in the savanna.

Other

New issue of the FLUXNET Newsletter was released

FluxLetter Vol 1, No 3

Publications

Xiao J, Zhuang Q, Baldocchi DD, Law BE, Richardson AD, Chen J, Oren R, Starr G, Noormets A, Ma S, Verma SB, Wharton S, Wofsy SC, Bolstad PV, Burns SP, Cook DR, Curtis PS, Drake BG, Falk M, Fischer ML, Foster DR, Gu L, Hadley JL, Hollinger DY, Katul GG, Litvak M, Martin TA, Matamala R, McNulty S, Meyers TP, Monson RK, Munger JW, Oechel WC, Paw U KT, Schmid HP, Scott RL, Sun G, Suyker AE, Torn MS (2008) Estimation of net ecosystem carbon exchange for the conterminous United States by combining MODIS and AmeriFlux data. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 148:1827-1847.

Staff News

Jessica Cruz Osuna received an honorable mention (i.e., runner up) for the New Phytologist Poster award at the recent Ecological Society of America Meetings in Milwaukee. Congratulations.

Visitors

Paul Stoy visited the Biomet Lab for a month as a FLUXNET Visiting Scientist.

Publications

Chen, X., Y. Rubin, S. Ma, and D. Baldocchi (2008), Observations and stochastic modeling of soil moisture control on evapotranspiration in a Californian oak savanna, Water Resour. Res., 44, W08409, doi:10.1029/2007WR006646.

Vargas, R. and Allen, M.F. 2008. Diel patterns of soil respiration in a tropical forests after Hurricane Wilma. Journal of Geophysical Research. 113. doi:10.10292007JG000620.

Prabha TV, Leclerc MY, Baldocchi D (2008) Comparison of In-Canopy Flux Footprints between Large-Eddy Simulation and the Lagrangian Simulation. J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 47, 2115–2128.

Matteo Detto, Gabriel G. Katul, Mario Siqueira, Jehn-Yih Juang, and Paul Stoy. 2008. THE STRUCTURE OF TURBULENCE NEAR A TALL FOREST EDGE: THE BACKWARD-FACING STEP FLOW ANALOGY REVISITED. Ecological Applications. 18, 1420

Visitors

Hideki Kobayashi visited the Biomet Lab. Dr. Kobayashi will join the lab in November for a 2 year stay as a postdoctoral Fellow. He will be funded by a Fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

Meetings

ddb lectured on canopy modeling at the Flux Shortcourse being organized by the University of Colorado, near Niwot Ridge.

Visitors

Derek Eamus from University of Technology, Syndey, Australia visited the Biomet lab and gave a presentation on carbon and water exchange of tropical savanna.

Meetings

ddb co-taught a short course, with Prof Park Nobel, on Trends in plant ecophysioligy and ecosystem ecology research at the University of Palermo. About 70 students from 17 countries were in attendance during the week.

ddb also visited the University of Tusica and presented a seminar on the Fluxnet project

Publications

Ryu, Y., Kang, S., Moon, S.-K. and Kim, J., Evaluation of land surface radiation balance derived from moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) over complex terrain and heterogeneous landscape on clear sky days. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, In Press, Corrected Proof.

Allen, M.F., R. Vargas, E.A. Graham, W. Swenson, M. Hamilton, M. Taggart, T.C. Harmon, A. Rat'ko, P. Rundel, B. Fulkerson, and D. Estrin, Soil sensor technology: Life within a pixel, Bioscience, 57 (10), 859-867, 2007.

Carbone, M.S., and R. Vargas, Automated soil respiration measurements: new information, opportunities and challenges, New Phytologist, 177 (2), 295-297, 2008.

Vargas, R., M.F. Allen, and E.B. Allen, Biomass and carbon accumulation in a fire chronosequence of a seasonally dry tropical forest, Global Change Biology, 14 (1), 109-124, 2008.

Staff News

Ted Hehn resigned at the end of the month to take a new position with NEON. Ted was a cornerstone of the biomet program since 2001 with his diverse set of abilities as the lab technician. Ted's skills in instrument design and fabrication, field work and general and diverse shop skills will be sorely missed and hard to replace. But new opportunities await him in his new position. Good Luck Ted.

Visitors

Ms Dimmie Hendricks, a graduate student from Free University, in Amsterdam was in residence for a month. Dimmie works on measuring methane fluxes with eddy covariance over peatland pastures in Holland.

Other

Volume 2 of FLUXNET FluxLetter was published

Volume 2 of FLUXNET FluxLetter

Youngryel Ryu will receive a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship for his project titled 'Improving global terrestrial estimates of evaporation un climate change with a synergy of Modis, FLUXNET and ecophysiological models.

Youngryel joins Nancy Kiang, Josh Fisher and Qi Chen, among past Biomet Lab students, who have received this fellowship.

The Publisher of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology informed us that two of our our papers from the Oak Savanna-Grassland study were among the Top 10 most cited articles in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology from 2003-2008.

'How plant functional-type, weather, seasonal drought, and soil physical properties alter water and energy fluxes of an oak-grass savanna and an annual grassland'. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 123(1-2): 13-39. 2004

Seasonal variation in carbon dioxide exchange over a Mediterranean annual grassland in California. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 123(1-2): 79-96. 2003

 

Employment Opportunities

The Biomet Lab will be recruiting a new Meteorological Technician. If interested please contact Dennis Baldocchi.

Publications

Ryu, Y. , Baldocchi, D.D.,Ma, S., and Hehn, T. 2008. Interannual variability of evapotranspiration and energy exchange over an annual grassland in California. Journal of Geophysical Research, Atmospheres. 113, D09104, doi:10.1029/2007JD009263

Knohl, A., Baldocchi, D.D. 2008. Effects of diffuse radiation on canopy gas exchange processes in forest ecosystems. . Journal of Geophysical Research , Biogeosciences . 113 : G02023, doi:10.1029/2007JG000663

Detto, M., Katul, G., Mancini, M., Montaldo, N. and Albertson, J.D., 2008. Surface heterogeneity and its signature in higher-order scalar similarity relationships. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 148(6-7): 902-916.

Chen, Q., Baldocchi, D., Gong, P. and Dawson, T., 2008. Modeling radiation and photosynthesis of a heterogeneous savanna woodland landscape with a hierarchy of model complexities. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 148(6-7): 1005-1020

Castellví, F., Snyder, R.L. and Baldocchi, D.D., 2008. Surface energy-balance closure over rangeland grass using the eddy covariance method and surface renewal analysis. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 148(6-7): 1147-1160

Meetings

ddb gave a department seminar on 'Breathing of the Biosphere, the Role of Flux Networks' for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, April 14, 2008 and

a Cal Day Presentation on 'Science and Ecology of Carbon Offsets'. powerpoint presentations are available for inspection on nature.berkeley.edu/biometlab/Lectures.

Publications

Sims,D. A., Rahman, A.F., Cordova, V.D., El-Masri, B.Z., Baldocchi, D.D., Bolstad, P.V, Flanagan, L.D., Goldstein, A.H., Hollinger, D.Y., Misson, L., Monson, R.K., Oechel, W.C.,Schmid, H.P., Wofsy, S.C., Xu, L. 2008. A new model of gross primary productivity for North American ecosystems based solely on the enhanced vegetation index and land surface temperature from MODIS. Remote Sening of the Environment.. 112(4): 1633-1646.

Staff News

Youngryel Ryu passed his oral examination and is now a Ph.D Candidate. Congratulations!

Collaborating graduate student, Alan DiVittorio, filed his dissertation entitled ' A biochemical leaf spectral model and method for characterizing ozone damage in pine' Congratulations Dr. DiVitorrio!

'Making Sense of CO2 data: a Microsoft/Berkeley Collaboration' . A Blog Interview of Catharine van Ingenen and ddb on Flux Networks and Databases

http://perspectives.on10.net/blogs/jonudell/Making-sense-of-C02-data/

Other

Youngryel Ryu was quoted in a Nature news article about plans to build a canal across Korea.

Korean and its ecological costs.

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080319/full/news.2008.679.html

Publications

Fisher, J, Tu, K. Baldocchi, D.D. 2008 Global estimates of the land-atmosphere water flux: a fully-remote sensing driven, flux site-validated ecophysiological model of evapotranspiration. Remote Sensing of the Environment. 112, 901-919.

Baldocchi, D.D., Wong, S.# 2008. Accumulated winter chill is decreasing in the fruit growing regions of California. Climatic Change. 87, S153-S166.

Visitors

Eddy Moors from Wageningen University and ALTERRA, Netherlands, visited to discuss carbon sequestration by peatland and wetland ecosystems and collaborative work between teams in California and the Netherlands.

Meetings

ddb gave an invited presentation on 'Why Ecologists need Soil Physics, and Vice Versa' at the 2008 Kirkham Conference on Soil Physics: Research on the Frontiers of Earth's Life Support System in Davis, Feb 25-26.

Publications

Baldocchi, D.D . 2008. 'Breathing' of the Terrestrial Biosphere: Lessons Learned from a Global Network of Carbon Dioxide Flux Measurement Systems. Australian Journal of Botany. 56, 1-26.

Falk, M., Ruiz, I., Ma, S. Hehn, T., Baldocchi, D. Linking the Seasonal Variation of Vegetation Indices with Ecosystem Carbon Flux Measurements: Comparing the Performance of Ground- and Satellite-based Sensors With Different Spectral Resolution. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. submitted

Staff News

Gretchen Miller won an award for Outstanding Student Paper Award for presentation at the 2007 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, California. Her presentation was entitled ' A new technique for upscaling sap flow transpiration measurements to stand or landscape scale fluxes'.

Meetings

ddb attended the NCEAS workshop on 'Terrestrial Ecosystems and Climate Policy' in Santa Barbara and gave a presentation on 'Measuring and modeling energy exchange of a woodland and grassland: A case for landscape modification'

Other

Links to Movies of the Vaira and Tonzi field sites are now available on

http://nature.berkeley.edu/biometlab/fieldpics

Watch the grass grow and decompose, clouds pass and the trees leaf out and senesce over the course of a year

New FLUXNET Newsletterhas been just released

Publications

Youngryel Ryu's paper on interannual variability of evaporation from an annual grassland was accepted for publication in Journal of Geophysical Research, Atmospheres

Alexander Knohl's paper on modeling and measuring the effects of diffuse light on carbon dioxide exchange, water use efficicieny, stable isotopes and isoprene emissions was accepted for publication in Journal of Geophysical Research, Biogeosciences