Wet Canopy Evaporation Rate of Three Stands in Western Sichuan, China

The wet canopy evaporation rate (Er) wascalculated by Penman-Monteith combination model based on three assumptions and with meteorological variables 2 m above the canopy inthree stands, dominated by spruce (SF), fir (FF) and birch (BF) trees, respectively[(,)( )]in the subalpineforests in western Sichuan, China over a growingseason. The total amount of the E was 44.5 mm forSF, 88.5 mm for FF and 57.8 mm for BF, accounting for 9.2%, 16.6% and 10.2% of the gross rainfall,respectively, in the measuring period. There was the highest average monthly Er and percentage of E togross rainfall for FF compared with SF and BF.Mean Er was 0.097 mm h-1 (ranging from 0.028 to0.487 mm h-1), 0.242 mm h-1 (from 0.068 to 0.711 mm h-1) and 0.149 mm h-1 (from 0.060 to 0.576 mm h-1for SF, FF and BF, respectively. The highest average monthly Er occurred in June was 0.120 mm h-1 forSF, 0.317 mm h-1 for FF and 0.169 mm h-1 for BF, and the lowest value in October was 0.083 mm h-1 for SF, 0.187 mm h-1 for FF and 0.101 mm h-1 for BF,respectively. The averages of Er from 8:00 to 16:00were significantly higher than those from 0:00 to8:00 and from 16:00 to 0:00 for the three stands. The marked daily and monthly differences of Er were contributable to the variations of solar radiation, air temperature and relative humidity above thecanopy.

The Impacts of the Interannual Variability of Vegetation on the Interannual Variability of Global Evapotranspiration: A Modeling Study

The impact of the interannual variability (IAV) of vegetation on the IAV of evapotranspiration is investigated with the Community Land Model (CLM3.0) and modified Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (DGVM). Two sets of 50-year off-line simulations are used in this study. The simulations begin with the same initial surface-water and heat states and are driven by the same atmospheric forcing data. The vegetation exhibits interannual variability in one simulation but not in the other simulation. However, the climatological means for the vegetation are the same. The IAV of the 50-year annual total evapotranspiration and its three partitions (ground evaporation, canopy evaporation, and transpiration) are analyzed. The global distribution of the evapotranspiration IAV and the statistics of evapotranspiration and its components in different ecosystems show that the IAV of ground evaporation is generally large in areas dominated by grass and deciduous trees, whereas the IAV of canopy evaporation and transpiration is large in areas dominated by bare soil and shrubs. For ground evaporation, canopy evaporation, and transpiration, the changes in IAV are larger than the mean state over most grasslands and shrublands. The study of two sites with the same IAV in the leaf area index (LAI) shows that the component with the smaller contribution to the total evapotranspiration is more sensitive to the IAV of vegetation. The IAV of the three components of evapotranspiration increases with the IAV of the fractional coverage (FC) and the LAI. The ground evaporation IAV shows the greatest increase, whereas the canopy evaporation shows the smallest increase.