UC Irvine

The Canopy Horizontal Array Turbulence Study (CHATS) experimental study was conducted at a Cilker Orchards's walnut blocks in Dixon, California, before and after leaves emerged, to help improve understanding, simulation capabilities, and modeling of coupled vegetation-atmosphere-land surface interactions. The campaign took place over 12 weeks in the spring of 2007 and was broken into three 4-week phases. Canopy-induced mechanical and thermodynamical vertical variation of turbulence transport characteristics and the linkages between canopy-scale motions and the larger scale planetary boundary layer (PBL) turbulence were measured. The observations focused on measurements characterizing stratification influences on the spatial structure of canopy-induced turbulence, the trace gas source/sink distribution associated with vegetation, and the overall impact of canopy-induced processes on trace gas transport.