Analysis of the Characteristics of Turbulent Flux and Its Footprint Climatology at An Agricultural Site

Based on quality controlled data from eddy covariance system and automatic weather station collected at Guantao farmland site from 2008 to 2010, the characteristics of diurnal, seasonal and annual variations of turbulent flux were reported. The corresponding source areas of flux measurement at different temporal scales were analyzed in detail, using arithmetic-averaged and flux-weighted footprint climatology calculation method, respectively. The main findings are as follows. Firstly, sensible heat and latent heat flux both show consistent diurnal variation throughout the year, while CO₂ fluxes only have significant diurnal variation in growing season with an opposite trend. The seasonal variation of the turbulent flux is mainly affected by the crop type and its growth status in different phenological periods. During growing season, latent heat flux and CO₂ flux are the dominant flux exchange items whose value are significantly higher in their middle growth stage than other ones during which latent heat and CO₂ flux exchange of the summer corn is stronger than winter wheat. Secondly, with combined effects of wind, turbulence and surface condition, the source area of flux measurement change most significantly at daily scale, less obvious at seasonal scale and smallest at annual scale. Finally, compared with arithmetic-averaged footprint climatology method, flux-weighted footprint climatology is a more reasonable method to calculate the source areas of the flux measurement, in that they account for the time change of the actual turbulent flux. The arithmetic-averaged results are most likely to overestimate the size of source area during small observed flux due to its weak turbulent exchange.