Use of the Richardson Number to Characterize Turbulence Structure over Plant Canopies

The Richardson number provides a simple way to characterize the behavior of turbulence structure over plant canopies as a function of atmospheric stability. We present observations and relationships of both the bulk and gradient Richardson number with commonly used turbulence statistics (turbulence intensities and drag coefficients) for several land use times. We discuss the measurement uncertainties to go into the calculation of Ri as well as how information derived from Ri is useful for not only parameterizations for land surface models, but also how Ri can be used for gap-‐filling observational eddy covariance datasets.