Estimation of Photosynthetically Active Radiation Under a Forest Canopy With Chlorophyll Extracts and From Basal Area Measurements

Ecology ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas O. Perry ◽  
Harold E. Sellers ◽  
Charles O. Blanchard
2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 1192-1203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Conghe Song ◽  
Lawrence E Band

The spatial patterns of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) under forest canopies, including both its mean and spatial variation, are critical factors to numerous understory ecophysiological processes. Currently, Beer's law is the primary algorithm used in ecological models simulating PAR transmission through plant canopies, because more accurate models are too complicated to be used operationally. This study developed a simple and computationally efficient model at a stand scale to simulate both the mean and variation of PAR (MVP) under forest canopies. The model assumes that a forest canopy is composed of individual crowns distributed within upper and lower boundaries with two types of gaps: the between- and within-crown gaps. The between-crown gaps are simulated with geometric optics, and the within-crown gaps are described by Beer's law. The model accounts for the covariance of PAR in space through time, making it possible to simulate both instantaneous and daily accumulated variance of PAR. Validation with observed PAR from the boreal ecosystem–atmosphere study (BOREAS) indicates that the model captures the mean and variance of PAR under forest canopy reasonably well. MVP holds the potential to improve simulation of light interception by forest canopies as well as the treatment of canopy rainfall interception in ecological models.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (23) ◽  
pp. 2806
Author(s):  
Kuo Zeng ◽  
Guang Zheng ◽  
Lixia Ma ◽  
Weimin Ju ◽  
Yong Pang

The three dimensional (3-D) spatiotemporal variations of forest photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) dictate the exchange rates of matter and energy in the carbon and water cycle processes between the plant-soil system and the atmosphere. It is still challenging to explicitly simulate spatial PAR values at any specific position within or under a discontinuous forest canopy. In this study, we propose a novel lidar-based approach to estimate both direct and diffuse forest PAR components from a 3-D perspective. An improved path length-based direct PAR estimation method was developed by incorporating the point density along a light transmission path, and we also obtained the diffuse PAR components using a point-based sky view analysis by assuming the anisotropic sky diffuse distribution. We compared the total PAR modelled using three light path length-based parameters with reference data measured by radiometers on a five-minute time scale during a daily solar course. Our results show that, in a discontinuous forest canopy, the effective path length is a feasible and powerful (R2 = 0.92, p < 0.01) parameter to capture the spatiotemporal variations of total PAR along a light transmission path with a mean bias of −53.04 μmol·m−2·s−1(−6.8%). Furthermore, incorporating point density and spatial distribution factors will further improve the final estimation accuracy (R2 = 0.97, p < 0.01). In the meantime, diffuse PAR tends to be overestimated by 17% at noon and underestimated by about 10% at sunrise and sunset periods by assuming the isotropic sky diffuse distribution. The proposed lidar-based 3-D PAR model will provide a solid foundation to various process-based eco-hydrological models for simulating plant physiological processes such as photosynthesis and evapotranspiration, intra-species competition and succession, and snowmelt dynamics purposes.


Nature Plants ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiji Hou ◽  
Thorsten Thiergart ◽  
Nathan Vannier ◽  
Fantin Mesny ◽  
Jörg Ziegler ◽  
...  

AbstractBidirectional root–shoot signalling is probably key in orchestrating stress responses and ensuring plant survival. Here, we show that Arabidopsis thaliana responses to microbial root commensals and light are interconnected along a microbiota–root–shoot axis. Microbiota and light manipulation experiments in a gnotobiotic plant system reveal that low photosynthetically active radiation perceived by leaves induces long-distance modulation of root bacterial communities but not fungal or oomycete communities. Reciprocally, microbial commensals alleviate plant growth deficiency under low photosynthetically active radiation. This growth rescue was associated with reduced microbiota-induced aboveground defence responses and altered resistance to foliar pathogens compared with the control light condition. Inspection of a set of A. thaliana mutants reveals that this microbiota- and light-dependent growth–defence trade-off is directly explained by belowground bacterial community composition and requires the host transcriptional regulator MYC2. Our work indicates that aboveground stress responses in plants can be modulated by signals from microbial root commensals.


Agriculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 351
Author(s):  
Adolfo Rosati ◽  
Damiano Marchionni ◽  
Dario Mantovani ◽  
Luigi Ponti ◽  
Franco Famiani

We quantified the photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) interception in a high-density (HD) and a super high-density (SHD) or hedgerow olive system, by measuring the PAR transmitted under the canopy along transects at increasing distance from the tree rows. Transmitted PAR was measured every minute, then cumulated over the day and the season. The frequencies of the different PAR levels occurring during the day were calculated. SHD intercepted significantly but slightly less overall PAR than HD (0.57 ± 0.002 vs. 0.62 ± 0.03 of the PAR incident above the canopy) but had a much greater spatial variability of transmitted PAR (0.21 under the tree row, up to 0.59 in the alley center), compared to HD (range: 0.34–0.43). This corresponded to greater variability in the frequencies of daily PAR values, with the more shaded positions receiving greater frequencies of low PAR values. The much lower PAR level under the tree row in SHD, compared to any position in HD, implies greater self-shading in lower-canopy layers, despite similar overall interception. Therefore, knowing overall PAR interception does not allow an understanding of differences in PAR distribution on the ground and within the canopy and their possible effects on canopy radiation use efficiency (RUE) and performance, between different architectural systems.


2008 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 853-868 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tao Zheng ◽  
Shunlin Liang ◽  
Kaicun Wang

Abstract Incident photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) is an important parameter for terrestrial ecosystem models. Because of its high temporal resolution, the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) observations are very suited to catch the diurnal variation of PAR. In this paper, a new method is developed to derive PAR using GOES data. What makes this new method distinct from the existing method is that it does not need external knowledge of atmospheric conditions. The new method retrieves both atmospheric and surface conditions using only at-sensor radiance through interpolation of time series of observations. Validations against ground measurement are carried out at four “FLUXNET” sites. The values of RMSE of estimated and ground-measured instantaneous PAR at the four sites are 130.71, 131.44, 141.16, and 190.22 μmol m−2 s−1, respectively. At the four validation sites, the RMSE as the percentage of estimated mean PAR value are 9.52%, 13.01%, 13.92%, and 24.09%, respectively; the biases are −101.54, 16.56, 11.09, and 53.64 μmol m−2 s−1, respectively. The independence of external atmospheric information enables this method to be applicable to many situations in which external atmospheric information is not available. In addition, topographic impacts on surface PAR are examined at the 1-km resolution at which PAR is retrieved using the GOES visible band data.


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