The effect of orchard crop structure on the integral length-scale of turbulence

The integral length-scalesL for the three orthogonal components of diffusivityK=L are derived from spectral analysis of velocity time series measurements. A 3-D sonic anemometer was used to make these velocity measurements at heights in the range 0.7–7.0 m in and above a 2 m orchard canopy with near-neutral atmospheric boundary-layer stability conditions. The integral length-scale is compared with another length-scale of diffusionL obtained by fitting an exponential model to the auto-correlation spectrumR _E (t) in the region 0.95<R _E (t)<0.5 for smallt. This length-scale is appropriate to a high frequency region of the energy spectrum where turbulent momentum transport becomes diffusion-like and the turbulent energy varies with the inverse square of frequence. This region has been shown by others to determine the magnitude of the dissipation rate of turbulent energy by the action of viscosity even though the dominant dynamics are inviscid. Within the crop, the ratio of the length-scalesL/L were found to be smaller than the values measured above the crop for vertical turbulence. This was attributed to the enhanced decay rate of turbulent energy due to the effect of the airflow interaction with the crop. It is unclear whether similar effects are present in the horizontal plane because of greater scatter in the data, resulting from the more variable nature of the wind direction in the horizontal plane.