•Annual gross ecosystem production and respiration correlated with elevation.•Timing and volume of snow cover affected the annual carbon balance.•Without snow cover, carbon uptake was controlled by ...(soil) temperature.•Foehn frequency represents a regional climate signal for ecosystem processes.
The 2013/2014 winter season showed exceptionally sparse snow cover conditions north of the Alps, which allowed an in situ investigation of the response of vegetation to changed environmental conditions. Examination of carbon dioxide fluxes at three grassland sites along an elevation gradient from 595 to 864ma.m.s.l. revealed that elevation, snow cover extent, soil temperature (Tsoil) and management were determinative factors for productivity. In the absence of snow cover at the highest elevation site (864m), substantial growth started only when the mean daily Tsoil exceeded 5°C. The lack of snow cover at the lowest elevation site (595m) allowed the vegetation to remain photosynthetically active throughout the winter, with a canopy that developed after the last harvest of the previous season. The reduced snow cover at the lower elevation sites (595 and 769m) resulted in an earlier spring, a significant increase in gross ecosystem production and ecosystem respiration, as well as enhanced seasonal carbon dioxide uptake. The reduced snow cover in the 2013/2014 winter season is attributed to low precipitation and high energy influx, which in turn were best explained by exceptionally frequent foehn, i.e., southern advection of dry, warm air across the Alps.
Core Ideas
Pre‐alpine areas face more intense warming and extreme hydrological events than the global average.
Climate and land management change have far‐reaching impacts on ecosystem functions and ...services.
We have improved knowledge of water, energy, and matter exchange by long‐term observations and modeling.
Global change has triggered several transformations, such as alterations in climate, land productivity, water resources, and atmospheric chemistry, with far reaching impacts on ecosystem functions and services. Finding solutions to climate and land cover change‐driven impacts on our terrestrial environment is one of the most important scientific challenges of the 21st century, with far‐reaching interlinkages to the socio‐economy. The setup of the German Terrestrial Environmental Observatories (TERENO) Pre‐Alpine Observatory was motivated by the fact that mountain areas, such as the pre‐alpine region in southern Germany, have been exposed to more intense warming compared with the global average trend and to higher frequencies of extreme hydrological events, such as droughts and intense rainfall. Scientific research questions in the TERENO Pre‐Alpine Observatory focus on improved process understanding and closing of combined energy, water, C, and N cycles at site to regional scales. The main long‐term objectives of the TERENO Pre‐Alpine Observatory include the characterization and quantification of climate change and land cover–management effects on terrestrial hydrology and biogeochemical processes at site and regional scales by joint measuring and modeling approaches. Here we present a detailed climatic and biogeophysical characterization of the TERENO Pre‐Alpine Observatory and a summary of novel scientific findings from observations and projects. Finally, we reflect on future directions of climate impact research in this particularly vulnerable region of Germany.
In the spring of 2013, extensive measurements with multiple Doppler lidar systems were performed. The instruments were arranged in a triangle with edge lengths of about 3 km in a moderately flat, ...agriculturally used terrain in northwestern Germany. For 6 mostly cloud-free convective days, vertical velocity variance profiles were calculated. Weighted-averaged surface fluxes proved to be more appropriate than data from individual sites for scaling the variance profiles; but even then, the scatter of profiles was mostly larger than the statistical error. The scatter could not be explained by mean wind speed or stability, whereas time periods with significantly increased variance contained broader thermals. Periods with an elevated maximum of the variance profiles could also be related to broad thermals. Moreover, statistically significant spatial differences of variance were found. They were not influenced by the existing surface heterogeneity. Instead, thermals were preserved between two sites when the travel time was shorter than the large-eddy turnover time. At the same time, no thermals passed for more than 2 h at a third site that was located perpendicular to the mean wind direction in relation to the first two sites. Organized structures of turbulence with subsidence prevailing in the surroundings of thermals can thus partly explain significant spatial variance differences existing for several hours. Therefore, the representativeness of individual variance profiles derived from measurements at a single site cannot be assumed.
As part of the quality assurance and quality control activities within the CarboEurope-IP network, a comparison of eddy-covariance software was conducted. For four five-day datasets, CO2 flux ...estimates were calculated by seven commonly used software packages to assess the uncertainty of CO2 flux estimates due to differences in post-processing. The datasets originated from different sites representing different commonly applied instrumentation and different canopy structures to cover a wide range of realistic conditions. Data preparation, coordinate rotation and the implementation of the correction for high frequency spectral losses were identified as crucial processing steps leading to significant discrepancies in the CO2 flux results. The overall comparison indicated a good although not yet perfect agreement among the different software within 5–10% difference for 30-min CO2 flux values. Conceptually different ideas about the selection and application of processing steps were a main reason for the differences in the CO2 flux estimates observed. A balance should be aspired between scientific freedom on the one hand, in order to advance methodical issues, and standardisation of procedures on the other hand, in order to obtain comparable fluxes for multi-site synthesis studies.
The goal of this study is to characterize the sensible (H) and latent (LE) heat exchange for different land covers in the heterogeneous steppe landscape of the Xilin River catchment, Inner Mongolia, ...China. Eddy-covariance flux measurements at 50–100 m above ground were conducted in July 2009 using a weight-shift microlight aircraft. Wavelet decomposition of the turbulence data enables a spatial discretization of 90 m of the flux measurements. For a total of 8446 flux observations during 12 flights, MODIS land surface temperature (LST) and enhanced vegetation index (EVI) in each flux footprint are determined. Boosted regression trees are then used to infer an environmental response function (ERF) between all flux observations (H, LE) and biophysical (LST, EVI) and meteorological drivers. Numerical tests show that ERF predictions covering the entire Xilin River catchment ( 3670 km2) are accurate to ≤18% (1 σ). The predictions are then summarized for each land cover type, providing individual estimates of source strength (36 W m−2 < H < 364 W m−2, 46 W m−2 < LE < 425 W m−2) and spatial variability (11 W m−2 < σH < 169 W m−2, 14 W m−2 < σLE < 152 W m−2) to a precision of ≤5%. Lastly, ERF predictions of land cover specific Bowen ratios are compared between subsequent flights at different locations in the Xilin River catchment. Agreement of the land cover specific Bowen ratios to within 12 9% emphasizes the robustness of the presented approach. This study indicates the potential of ERFs for (i) extending airborne flux measurements to the catchment scale, (ii) assessing the spatial representativeness of long-term tower flux measurements, and (iii) designing, constraining and evaluating flux algorithms for remote sensing and numerical modelling applications.
Regional ecosystem productivity is highly sensitive to inter-annual climate variability, both within and outside the primary carbon uptake period. However, Earth system models lack sufficient spatial ...scales and ecosystem processes to resolve how these processes may change in a warming climate. Here, we show, how for the European Alps, mid-latitude Atlantic ocean winter circulation anomalies drive high-altitude summer forest and grassland productivity, through feedbacks among orographic wind circulation patterns, snowfall, winter and spring temperatures, and vegetation activity. Therefore, to understand future global climate change influence to regional ecosystem productivity, Earth systems models need to focus on improvements towards topographic downscaling of changes in regional atmospheric circulation patterns and to lagged responses in vegetation dynamics to non-growing season climate anomalies.
Multi‐isotope fingerprints in the bioapatite of archaeological skeletons are mostly superior over single isotope analyses for provenance studies. Gaussian mixture model (GMM) clustering is a novel ...tool for a similarity search among multidimensional data sets and at the same time permits the evaluation of the structural importance of particular isotopic ratios in the data set. We applied three GMM clustering experiments on multi‐isotope fingerprints—stable strontium (Sr), lead (Pb) and oxygen (O) isotopic ratios—established in 217 archaeological animal bones excavated along a specific transect across the European Alps. This reference region had been in use since prehistoric times by humans who crossed the Alps from north to south, and vice versa. The resulting clusters permit a spatial assignment of the specimens with a very high probability, in particular with regard to the geological complexity of the region. A combination of Sr with Pb stable isotopes led to an optimal differentiation between the southern and northern Alpine forelands that cannot be distinguished from each other by 87Sr/86Sr ratios alone, while the contribution of δ18O is not particularly high. The isotopic mapping and subsequent cluster analysis is suitable for the analysis of archaeological human finds and the reconstruction of the direction of transalpine mobility and trade.
Core Ideas
A new hydrometeorological observatory was established for the Sudan Savanna.
More than 30 hydrometeorological variables in subhourly resolution are provided.
Water, energy, and CO2 fluxes ...are monitored along a land use change gradient.
The data form the basis for an improved impact assessment of environmental changes.
It is an excellent platform for future field and modeling studies in West Africa.
Watersheds with rich hydrometeorological equipment are still very limited in West Africa but are essential for an improved analysis of environmental changes and their impacts in this region. This study gives an overview of a novel hydrometeorological observatory that was established for two mesoscale watersheds in the Sudan Savanna of Southern Burkina Faso and Northern Ghana as part of the West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL) program. The study area is characterized by severe land cover changes due to a strongly increasing demand of agricultural land. The observatory is designed for long‐term measurements of >30 hydrometeorological variables in subhourly resolution and further variables such as CO2. This information is complemented by long‐term daily measurements from national meteorological and hydrological networks, among several other datasets recently established for this region. A unique component of the observatory is a micrometeorological field experiment using eddy covariance stations implemented at three contrasting sites (near‐natural, cropland, and degraded grassland) to assess the impact of land cover changes on water, energy, and CO2 fluxes. The datasets of the observatory are needed by many modeling and field studies conducted in this region and are made available via the WASCAL database. Moreover, the observatory forms an excellent platform for future investigations and can be used as observational foundation for environmental observatories for an improved assessment of environmental changes and their socioeconomic impacts for the savanna regions of West Africa.