Impact of Vegetation on Day and Night Surface Temperatures Across an Ecotone

Surface temperature generally varies on a day to night cycle with the amount of net radiation playing most of the role. While this is true for larger spatial scales, it is a little more complicated the smaller the scale. At a microclimatic level surface temperature varies because of many different factors such as wind, vegetation, soil moisture, and amount of absorbed incoming solar radiation. In this project the primary focus will be on the impacts that vegetation has on the surface temperature both during the day and night and specifically analyzing it across an ecotone. An ecotone is a transition zone between 2 ecosystems which can encompass both more and less vegetated areas commonly found in the environment. It is necessary to study these changes in surface temperature across an ecotone as it houses important “edge species” that are crucial and provide for a more diverse and broader ecosystem. In addition, these species are more suspectable to temperature changes as they live on the edge of ecosystems so it is crucial to study how the level and type of vegetation cover impacts these fluctuations in temperature. This study overall will provide the differences in surface temperature across an ecotone and evaluate how the level and type of vegetation impacts these temperature differences.