The Impact of Land Use Change in Southwestern Australia: The Australian Bunny Fence Experiment (BuFEx-05)
Abstract
Over the last few decades, areas in excess of 13 million hectares have been cleared of native vegetation in Southwestern Australia for cultivation of winter growing agricultural crops. A vermin proof fence ("Bunny Fence"), approximately 750 km long, separates the agricultural areas to the west from the native vegetation areas to the east. Significant differences in albedo between the native vegetation and agricultural areas are readily visible in satellite imagery, with the agricultural areas having a higher albedo compared to native vegetation. The drastic nature of land use change, coupled with relatively small variations in topography makes this area ideal to investigate the influence of land use and landscape heterogeneity on atmospheric circulation and cloud formation. The first of three field campaigns was conducted in December 2005 (BuFEx-05) jointly by the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Murdoch University, and Flinders University. It was designed to study the impact of human induced regional-scale landscape modification on surface fluxes, atmospheric circulation and cloud formation. During BuFEx-05, measurement of atmospheric thermodynamic profiles and surface energy fluxes, surface meteorological variables, soil temperature and soil moisture were made at two sites: one located at the Lake King airstrip 20 km to the west of the Bunny Fence and the other located 20 km to the east of the Fence in the Frank Hann National Park. Radiosondes were released simultaneously from both the sites approximately every 3-4 hours during the day. On selected days, Flinders University's Small Environmental Research Aircraft (SERA), an instrumented ECO-Dimona, flew transects between the two sites measuring air temperature, humidity, sensible heat, latent heat and momentum fluxes. The SERA also operated an infrared, three-channel visible scanner and a laser altimeter. The ASTER sensor on the NASA EOS Terra satellite platform acquired three scenes over the study region during the field experiment. Initial analysis shows differences in boundary layer heights between the sites, with deeper boundary layers over the native vegetation side during synoptically calm days. This paper will present a detailed overview of the BuFEx-05 and present some of the preliminary results.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2006
- Bibcode:
- 2006AGUFM.A54A..07W
- Keywords:
-
- 1631 Land/atmosphere interactions (1218;
- 1843;
- 3322);
- 1632 Land cover change;
- 1834 Human impacts;
- 1843 Land/atmosphere interactions (1218;
- 1631;
- 3322);
- 3322 Land/atmosphere interactions (1218;
- 1631;
- 1843)