Analysis of the Variability of Canopy Resistance over a Desert Steppe Site in Inner Mongolia, China

ABSTRACT Canopy resistance substantially affects the partitioning of available energy over vegetated surfaces. This study analyzed the variability of canopy resistance and associated driving environmental factors over a desert steppe site in Inner Mongolia, China, through the use of eddy-flux and meteorological data collected from 2008 to 2010. Distinct seasonal and interannual variabilities in canopy resistance were identified within those three years, and these variabilities were controlled primarily by precipitation. Strong interannual variability was found in vapor pressure deficit （VPD）, similar to that of air temperature. Based on the principal component regression method, the analysis of the relative contribution of five major environmental factors [soil-water content （SWC）, leaf-area index （LAI）, photosynthetically active radiation （Kp）, VPD, and air temperature] to canopy resistance showed that the canopy-resistance variation was most responsive to SWC （with 〉 35% contribution）, followed by LAI, especially for water-stressed soil conditions （〉 20% influence）, and VPD （consistently with an influence of approximately 20%）. Canopy-resistance variations did not respond to Kp due to the small interannual variability in Kp during the three years. These analyses were used to develop a new exponential function of water stress for the widely used Jarvis scheme, which substantially improved the calculation of canopy resistance and latent heat fluxes, especially for moist and wet soils, and effectively reduced the high bias in evaporation estimated by the original Jarvis scheme. This study highlighted the important control of canopy resistance on plant evaporation and growth for the investigated desert steppe site with a relatively low LA1.

A proposed surface resistance model for the Penman-Monteith formula to estimate evapotranspiration in a solar greenhouse

Greenhousing is a technique to bridge season gap in vegetable production and has been widely used worldwide. Calculation of water requirement of crops grown in greenhouse and determination of their irrigation schedules in arid and semi-arid regions are essential for greenhouse maintenance and have thus attracted increased attention over the past decades. The most common method used in the literature to estimate crop evapotranspiration（ET） is the Penman-Monteith（PM） formula. When applied to greenhouse, however, it often uses canopy resistance instead of surface resistance. It is understood that the surface resistance in greenhouse is the result of a combined effect of canopy restriction and soil-surface restriction to water vapor flow, and the relative dominance of one restriction over another depends on crop canopy. In this paper, we developed a surface resistance model in a way similar to two parallel resistances in an electrical circuit to account for both restrictions. Also, considering that wind speed in greenhouse is normally rather small, we compared three methods available in the literature to calculate the aerodynamic resistance, which are the r_a^1 method proposed by Perrier（1975a, b）, the r_a^2 method proposed by Thom and Oliver（1977）, and the r_a^3 method proposed by Zhang and Lemeu（1992）. We validated the model against ET of tomatoes in a greenhouse measured from sap flow system combined with micro-lysimeter in 2015 and with weighing lysimeter in 2016. The results showed that the proposed surface resistance model improved the accuracy of the PM model, especially when the leaf area index was low and the greenhouse was being irrigated. We also found that the aerodynamic resistance calculated from the r_a^1 and r_a^3 methods is applicable to the greenhouse although the latter is slightly more accurate than the former. The proposed surface resistance model, together with the r_a^3 method for aerodynamic resistance, offers an improved approach to estimate ET in greenhouse using the PM formula.