Measuring and modeling disturbance-induced changes to flux dynamics in increasingly heterogeneous canopy environments

Turbulent eddies control the flux of carbon, water and other gases between forested environments and the atmosphere. Inside the canopy, eddy correlation length is very small and surface heterogeneity due to tree-crown structures occurs at these scales. Computer simulations, particularly Large-Eddy Simulations (LES), provide the foundation to test the sensitivity of flux exchange and turbulent mixing to small scale processes, such as successional- or disturbance-driven changes to canopy structure. At the Forest Accelerated Succession ExperimenT (FASET), we disturbed 39 ha of forest by girdling all canopy-dominant early-successional aspen and birch trees, leading to a large mortality event, followed by a shift in forest structure that is typical of a more mature successional stage. Over the course of the study, we have found a divergence from pre-treatment biosphere-atmosphere gas-exchange trends between the control and disturbance sites due to changes in canopy structure and, as a consequence, biological response. We use the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS)-based Forest Large-Eddy Simulation (RAFLES), and the more dynamic RAFLES-Ecosystem Demography (ED2) model, to investigate the consequences of increasingly heterogeneous forest environments to canopy-atmosphere exchange. RAFLES-ED2 resolves multi-layered light attenuation and vegetation and surface heat, vapor and CO2 fluxes and includes a multi-layered soil column under each atmosphere-vegetation column, as opposed to the single-layered soil-vegetation model in RAFLES. The model environment was determined by remote sensing of the actual forested area of interest using airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) measurements and eddy-flux gas exchange measurements at two neighboring AmeriFlux eddy-flux towers, the manipulated site (US-UMd) and its undisturbed control (US-UMB) both at the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS) cluster site. We find more accurate surface roughness estimates and more representative scalar fluxes by increasing canopy heterogeneous inputs. Furthermore, the RAFLES-ED2 retrofit leads to less LAI dependent scalar fluxes and a more biologically accurate depiction of latent heat flux through evapotranspiration by vegetation.