Carbon and energy fluxes of the understory vegetation of the black spruce ecosystem in interior Alaska

Underlain by permafrost, understory vegetation in the boreal forest of the high northern latitudes is likely sensitive to climate change. This study investigated the contribution of the understory vegetation of the black spruce forest (Picea mariana) to net ecosystem exchange (NEE) and vertical energy fluxes at the supersite (65deg 07' 24' N, 147deg 29' 15' W) of the JAMSTEC-IARC Collaboration Study (JICS) located within the property of the Poker Flat Research Range of the University of Alaska Fairbanks in interior Alaska [Sugiura et al., 2011; Nakai et al., 2013]. The understory is dominated by a 0 - 20 cm thick layer of peat moss (Sphagnum fuscum) and feather moss (Hylocomium splendens). Eddy covariance measurements were made at 11 m over the canopy and 1.9 m above the ground in summer 2013. The measurement shows that the peak sink of CO2 from understory during the day typically accounted for 80% of the total NEE of (~ 3 μmol m-2s-1) observed over the canopy. Sensible heat flux was nearly identical between the two heights and latent heat flux observed at 1.9m was slightly higher than that observed at 11m. Higher latent heat flux from understory than the total latent heat flux over the canopy is most likely due to the difference in the footprint of the two measurements, and it is necessary to further evaluate the spatial representativeness of the understory fluxes. Nonetheless, these high flux values from the understory suggest an importance of the understory vegetation in evaluating ecosystem flux of the black spruce forest. Acknowledgement This study is funded by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) References Nakai, T., Y. Kim, R. C. Busey, R. Suzuki, S. Nagai, H. Kobayashi, H. Park, K. Sugiura, and A. Ito (2013), Characteristics of evapotranspiration from a permafrost black spruce forest in interior Alaska, Polar Science, 7(2), 136-148, doi:10.1016/j.polar.2013.03.003. Sugiura, K. et al. (2011), Supersite as a common platform for multi-observations in Alaska for a collaborative framework between JAMSTEC and IARC, JAMSTEC Report of Research and Development, 12, 61-69.