Document Type

Article

Publication Date

February 2010

Publication Title

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

Volume

91

Issue Number

2

DOI

10.1175/2009BAMS2733.1

Keywords

rocky mountains, atmosphere exchange

Disciplines

Atmospheric Sciences | Climate | Meteorology

Abstract

A significant fraction of Earth consists of mountainous terrain. However, the question of how to monitor the surface–atmosphere carbon exchange over complex terrain has not been fully explored. This article reports on studies by a team of investigators from U.S. universities and research institutes who carried out a multiscale and multidisciplinary field and modeling investigation of the CO2 exchange between ecosystems and the atmosphere and of CO2 transport over complex mountainous terrain in the Rocky Mountain region of Colorado. The goals of the field campaign, which included ground and airborne in situ and remote-sensing measurements, were to characterize unique features of the local CO2 exchange and to find effective methods to measure regional ecosystem–atmosphere CO2 exchange over complex terrain. The modeling effort included atmospheric and ecological numerical modeling and data assimilation to investigate regional CO2 transport and biological processes involved in ecosystem-atmosphere carbon exchange. In this report, we document our approaches, demonstrate some preliminary results, and discuss principal patterns and conclusions concerning ecosystem-atmosphere carbon exchange over complex terrain and its relation to past studies that have considered these processes over much simpler terrain.

Comments

© Copyright 2010 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act September 2010 Page 2 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a web site or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy, available on the AMS Web site located at (https://www.ametsoc.org/) or from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or copyrights@ametsoc.org.
This article was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, volume 91, issue 2, 2010, and can be found online at the following link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/2009BAMS2733.1
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