On the North Slope of Alaska, current ecological research has been improved via the application of radiation measurements made by Kipp & Zonen products, an OTT HydroMet brand.
Image Credit: OTT HydroMet
At this location, CNR 4 Net Radiometers are installed at four locations: Toolik Lake (68°37’15.78” N, 149°35’47.40” W) and Imnavait Creek (68°36’59.12” N, 149°18’22.69” W), Atqasuk (70°27’ N, 157°24’ W) and Barrow Alaska (71°18’ N, 156°40’ W).
This instrument belongs to a series of sensors on mobile platforms developed to evaluate Arctic ecological properties of vegetation through prolonged observations within the Arctic Observation Network (AON) and the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX) initiated early in the 1990s.
Utilizing the CNR 4 model at the North Slope locations facilitates the analysis of all incoming and outgoing long-wave and short-wave radiation across various vegetative communities, including moist acidic tundra, shrub tundra, and dry heath, amongst others.
At a fifth location, Thule Greenland (76°32’ N, 68°49’ W), a CNR 2 has been installed in conjunction with a CMP 3 pyranometer.
Image Credit: OTT HydroMet
Each day, scans are collected covering the Arctic growing season (May to September), facilitating the analysis of occurring phenomena over daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal time periods.
These radiation measurements across the Arctic biome are vital for AON-ITEX to carefully evaluate short-term and long-term energy, carbon, and water balance studies at the Earth’s surface.
These projects do not only take place in Alaska, a lightweight mobile sensor with a CNR 2 net radiometer and CMP 3 pyranometer system has also been deployed above the canopy of rainforest in Costa Rica.
Additionally, two eddy covariance flux towers installed in the Everglades of Florida use CNR 2’s. In the Florida Everglades Wetlands, a Kipp & Zonen Large Aperture Scintillometer (LAS) is being used for sensible heat flux measurement.
Discover more about how the Florida International University Department of Biological Sciences work at: www.biology.fiu.edu.
See the tram powered International Tundra Experiment detailed in the video interview from 2013 below by: www.FrontierScientists.com
ITEX: Tram Powered
Video Credit: Frontier Scientists
This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by OTT HydroMet.
Kipp & Zonen is one of OTT HydroMet's brands for professional environmental monitoring. For more information on this source, please visit OTT HydroMet.