Novel Meteorological Methods for Measuring Trace Gas Fluxes

The paper deals with flux measurements in two contexts: small plots and plant canopies. Mass balance methods have been developed for small experimental plots with lateral dimensions of tens of metres rather than the 1 m typical of chambers or the hundreds of metres required for conventional micrometeorological estimates. The general method relies on the conservation of mass to equate the differences in horizontal fluxes across upwind and downwind boundaries of a test plot with the surface flux within the plot along the line of the wind. Applications to soil and animal experiments are discussed. Lagrangian descriptions of transport now supplant older, but inappropriate gradient-diffusion theory for inferring fluxes and source-sink distributions of scalars in plant canopies. An inverse Lagrangian theory due to M. R. Raupach provides a relatively simple observational and computational scheme for making such inferences from measurements of mean concentration profiles and canopy turbulence. The scheme and a range of applications are described.