The surface energy budget plays an important role in boundary-layer meteorology and quantifying these budgets over varying land surface types is important in studying land-atmosphere interactions. In late April 2007, eddy covariance towers were erected at four sites in the Little Washita Watershed in central Oklahoma as a part of the Cloud and Land Surface Interaction Campaign (CLASIC) field experiment. Two of these towers were placed in winter wheat fields and two were placed in rangeland areas. Over the course of the following summer months, multiple energy balance variables were continuously measured at these sites including the sensible, latent, and ground heat fluxes. Data was collected from each site and analyzed to quantify the evolution of the surface energy budget at the rangeland areas and for the pre- versus post-harvest at the winter wheat fields.

The results of the analyses revealed significant differences between the sites as the land cover types transitioned during the study period. Further, the observations were collected during a period that included historic rainfall totals. As such the rangeland sites exhibited very gradual rates of change of for each variable observed. Conversely, because the land-cover at the wheat field sites changed dramatically during the study period, the observed quantities also yielded increased variation.