Identification

Title

Turbulence structure above a vegetation canopy

Abstract

We compare the turbulence statistics of the canopy/roughness sublayer (RSL) and the inertial sublayer (ISL) above. In the RSL the turbulence is more coherent and more efficient at transporting momentum and scalars and in most ways resembles a turbulent mixing layer rather than a boundary layer. To understand these differences we analyse a large-eddy simulation of the flow above and within a vegetation canopy. The three-dimensional velocity and scalar structure of a characteristic eddy is educed by compositing, using local maxima of static pressure at the canopy top as a trigger. The characteristic eddy consists of an upstream head-down sweep-generating hairpin vortex superimposed on a downstream head-up ejection-generating hairpin. The conjunction of the sweep and ejection produces the pressure maximum between the hairpins, and this is also the location of a coherent scalar microfront. This eddy structure matches that observed in simulations of homogeneous-shear flows and channel flows by several workers and also fits with earlier field and wind-tunnel measurements in canopy flows. It is significantly different from the eddy structure educed over smooth walls by conditional sampling based only on ejections as a trigger. The characteristic eddy was also reconstructed by empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis, when only the dominant, sweep-generating head-down hairpin was recovered, prompting a re-evaluation of earlier results based on EOF analysis of wind-tunnel data. A phenomenological model is proposed to explain both the structure of the characteristic eddy and the key differences between turbulence in the canopy/RSL and the ISL above. This model suggests a new scaling length that can be used to collapse turbulence moments over vegetation canopies.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7d50p0v

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2009-10-07T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact