Observation of atmosphere-forest exchange processes at the new TERENO site Wüstebach

The Wüstebach site is located in a spruce forest covering the catchment of a small creek called “Wüstebach” in the German national park “Eifel”. It is part of the “Eifel/Lower Rhine Valley” Observatory within the German Terrestrial Environmental Observatories (TERENO) network. The site hosts a 36-m tower with instrumentation to yield long-term monitoring of the atmosphere-canopy exchange processes of a typical mid-latitude forest. To characterize the entire exchange process, quantities are measured above, within and below the vegetation: Flux measurements, i.e. eddy-covariance (EC) measurements of heat, momentum, CO2 and water-vapor fluxes, are taken above the canopy. Profile measurements of mean quantities are taken from the ground to 1.2 times canopy height; CO2 and N2O concentration profiles are planned. Surface and soil property measurements are performed around the tower base. Cosmic ray probes deployed in the area and 150 soil measurement stations with 900 soil moisture and 300 temperature sensors allow insight into temporal dynamics of soil moisture patterns. Both enable investigations of the coherence of footprint and spatio-temporal moisture patterns. The tower is planned to become integrated into the ICOS (Integrated Carbon Observation System) program as a secondary site. Additionally, it will serve as a reference for a nearby clear cut intended to accelerate succession from the current spruce plantation (picea abies) to natural vegetation dominated by beech. First results are encouraging and the evaluation of different quality control schemes to the data obtained point to a good applicability the project goals.