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The dispersion of heavy particles such as seeds within canopies is evaluated using Lagrangian stochastic trajectory models, laboratory, and field experiments. Inclusion of turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate intermittency is shown to increase long-distance dispersal (LDD) by contributing to the intermittent ejection of particles to regions of high mean velocity outside the canopy volume. Model evaluation against controlled flume experiments, featuring a dense rod canopy, detailed flow measurements, and imaged trajectories of spherical particles, demonstrates that superimposing a terminal velocity on the fluid velocity is insufficient to determine the particle dispersal kernel. Modifying the trajectory model by adding dissipation intermittency is found to be significant for dispersal predictions along with the addition of inertial and crossing trajectories’ effects. Comparison with manual seed-release experiments in a forest using wind-dispersed seeds shows that the model captures most of the measured kernels when accepted uncertainties in plant area index and friction velocity are considered. Unlike the flume experiments, the model modifications for several wind-dispersed seeds have minor effects on short-distance dispersal. A large increase was predicted in LDD when including dissipation intermittency for the forest experiment. The main results suggest that fitting or calibrating models to the ‘main body’ of measured kernels may not offer extrapolating foresight to LDD predictions. As inertial effects were found mostly negligible in the field conditions here, the extended trajectory model requires specifying only the seed’s terminal velocity and a constant variance of the normalized dissipation rate. Therefore, the proposed modifications can be readily applied to classical trajectory models so as to improve LDD predictions.

Streamflow prediction in high-altitude scarcely-gauged catchments is essential for efficient water resources management and hydropower generation. Aim of this study is to estimate water resources availability (WRA) by the application of a standard rainfall-runoff model and to study its impact on mini-hydropower production with application to Mangla basin. The Mangla basin is a scarcely gauged catchment situated in the snow- and glacier-fed Himalayan and Pir Panjal Range. Daily streamflow forecasting has been performed by the application of a GIS (Geographic Information System) based hydrological modeling system (HEC-HMS) with observed and TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission) rainfall data to cover the ungauged part of the catchment. The obtained results suggest that HEC-HMS can efficiently reproduce daily streamflows in snow-fed glacierized catchments with Nash-Sutcliffe (NS) coefficients in the range 0.71–0.80. The WRA was estimated at the Mangla dam to analyze its impact on mini-hydropower generation at Upper Jhelum Canal (UJC). The gross mini-hydropower potential energy on the UJC was found to be 196 and 360 GWH for average and design discharge, respectively, demonstrated that mini-hydro power generation could be a significant addition for the energy sector of Pakistan.

Laser Doppler anemometery and laser-induced fluorescence techniques were used to explore the spatial structure of the flow within and above finite cavities created within porous and solid media. The cavities within these two configurations were identical in size and were intended to mimic flow disturbances created by finite gaps and forest clearing. Because flows over permeable boundaries differ from their solid counterparts, the study here addresses how these differences in boundary conditions produce differences in, (i) bulk flow properties including the mean vorticity within and adjacent to the gaps, (ii) second-order statistics such as the standard deviations and turbulent stresses, (iii) the relative importance of advective to turbulent stress terms across various regions within and above the gaps, and (iv) the local imbalance between ejections and sweeps and momentum transport efficiencies of updrafts and downdrafts. Both configurations exhibited a primary recirculation zone of comparable dimensions inside the gap. The mean vorticity spawned at the upstream corner of the gap was more intense for the solid configuration when compared to its porous counterpart. The free-shear layer spawned from the upstream corner-edge deeper into the gap for the porous configuration. The momentum flux at the interface within and above the gap was enhanced by a factor of 1.5–2.0 over its upstream value, and this enhancement zone was much broader in size for the porous configuration. For the turbulent transport terms in the longitudinal and vertical mean momentum balances, these transport terms were significant inside the gap for both boundary configurations when compared to their upstream counterpart. The effectiveness of using incomplete cumulant expansion methods to describe the momentum transport efficiencies, and the relative contributions of ejections and sweeps to turbulent stresses, especially in this zone, were also demonstrated. The flatness factor for both velocity components, often used as a measure of intermittency, was highest in the vicinity of the upstream corner in both configurations. However, immediately following the downstream corner, the flatness factor remained large for the porous configuration, in contrast to its solid configuration counterpart.

The scalar concentration fluctuations within a plane parallel-to-the-ground surface were measured inside a model canopy composed of densely arrayed rods using the laser-induced fluorescence technique. Two-dimensional scalar concentration spectra were computed and were shown to exhibit an approximate −3 power-law scaling at wavenumbers larger than those associated with wake production during quiescent instances when von Karman vortex streets dominated the flow. However, during instances when sweeps disrupted the flow, the spectral exponents increased above −3. The −3 power-law for these concentration fluctuation spectra measurements was shown to be consistent with a simplified spectral budget for locally homogeneous and isotropic turbulence augmented with a relaxation time scale similarity argument that assumed a constant enstrophy injection rate and wake generation mechanism. Hence, the origin of this −3 power-law scaling here differs from the well-known −3 power-law result for the so-called inertial diffusive range derived for the scalar concentration spectrum at small Prandtl numbers.

Inferring the vertical variation of the mean turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate (e) inside dense canopies remains a basic research problem to be confronted. Using detailed laser Doppler anemometry (LDA) measurements collected within a densely arrayed rod canopy, traditional and newly proposed methods to infer e profiles are compared. The traditional methods for estimating e at a given layer include isotropic relationships applied to the viscous dissipation scales that are resolved by LDA measurements, higher order structure function methods, and residuals of the turbulent kinetic energy budget in which production and transport terms are all independently inferred. The newly proposed method extends earlier approaches based on zero-crossing statistics, which were shown to be promising in a number of laboratory flows. The extension to account for an arbitrary threshold (hereafter referred to as the level-crossing method) instead of zero-crossing minimizes the effects of instrument noise on the inferred e. While none of the e methods employed here can be titled as ‘measured’, these methods differ in their underlying assumptions and simplifications. Above the canopy, where a balance between production and dissipation rate of turbulent kinetic energy is expected, the agreement among all the methods is reasonably good. In the lower-to-middle layers of the canopy, all the methods agree except for those based on a structure-function inference of e. This departure can be attributed to the lack of a well-defined inertial subrange in these layers. In the upper canopy layers, the disagreements between the methods are largest. Even the higher order structure-function methods disagree with each other when e is inferred from third- and fifth-order moments. However, for all layers within the canopy, the proposed zero- and threshold-crossing methods agree well with estimates of e derived from the isotropic relationship applied to the viscous dissipation range. Finally, the advantages of introducing thresholds to minimize two types of instrument noises, additive and multiplicative, are briefly discussed.

Virtually all reviews dealing with aerosol-sized particle deposition onto forested ecosystems stress the significance of topographic variations, yet only a handful of studies considered the effects of these variations on the deposition velocity (Vd ). Here, the interplay between the foliage collection mechanisms within a dense canopy for different particle sizes and the flow dynamics for a neutrally stratified boundary layer on a gentle and repeating cosine hill are considered. In particular, how topography alters the spatial structure of Vd and its two constitutive components, particle fluxes and particle mean concentration within and immediately above the canopy, is examined in reference to a uniform flat-terrain case. A two-dimensional and particle-size resolving model based on first-order closure principles that explicitly accounts for (i) the flow dynamics, including the two advective terms, (ii) the spatial variation in turbulent viscosity, and (iii) the three foliage collection mechanisms that include Brownian diffusion, turbo-phoresis, and inertial impaction is developed and used. The model calculations suggest that, individually, the advective terms can be large just above the canopy and comparable to the canopy collection mechanisms in magnitude but tend to be opposite to each other in sign. Moreover, these two advective terms are not precisely out of phase with each other, and hence, do not readily cancel each other upon averaging across the hill wavelength. For the larger aerosol-sized particles, differences between flat-terrain and hill-averaged Vd can be significant, especially in the layers just above the canopy. We also found that the hill-induced variations in turbulent shear stress, which are out-of-phase

To investigate how velocity variances and spectra are modified by the simultaneous action of topography and canopy, two flume experiments were carried out on a train of gentle cosine hills differing in surface cover. The first experiment was conducted above a bare surface while the second experiment was conducted within and above a densely arrayed rod canopy. The velocity variances and spectra from these two experiments were compared in the middle, inner, and near-surface layers. In the middle layer, and for the canopy surface, longitudinal and vertical velocity variances (\({\sigma_u^2,\sigma_w^2}\)) were in phase with the hill-induced spatial mean velocity perturbation (Δu) around the so-called background state (taken here as the longitudinal mean at a given height) as predicted by rapid distortion theory (RDT). However, for the bare surface case, \({\sigma_u^2 }\) and \({\sigma_w^2 }\) remained out of phase with Δu by about L/2, where L is the hill half-length. In the canopy layer, wake production was a significant source of turbulent energy for \({\sigma_w^2 }\) , and its action was to re-align velocity variances with Δu in those layers, a mechanism completely absent for the bare surface case. Such a lower ‘boundary condition’ resulted in longitudinal variations of \({\sigma_w^2}\) to be nearly in phase with Δu above the canopy surface. In the inner and middle layers, the spectral distortions by the hill remained significant for the background state of the bare surface case but not for the canopy surface case. In particular, in the inner and middle layers of the bare surface case, the effective exponents derived from the locally measured power spectra diverged from their expected − 5/3 value for inertial subrange scales. These departures spatially correlated with the hill surface. However, for the canopy surface case, the spectral exponents were near − 5/3 above the canopy though the minor differences from − 5/3 were also correlated with the hill surface. Inside the canopy, wake production and energy short-circuiting resulted in significant departures from − 5/3. These departures from − 5/3 also appeared correlated with the hill surface through the wake production contribution and its alignment with Δu. Moreover, scales commensurate with Von Karman street vorticies well described wake production scales inside the canopy, confirming the important role of the mean flow in producing wakes. The spectra inside the canopy on the lee side of the hill, where a negative mean flow delineated a recirculation zone, suggested that the wake production scales there were ‘broader’ when compared to their counterpart outside the recirculation zone. Inside the recirculation zone, there was significantly more energy at higher frequencies when compared to regions outside the recirculation zone.

Resolving every detail of the three-dimensional canopy morphology and its underlying topography remains untenable when modeling high Reynolds number geophysical flows. How to represent the effects of such a complex morphological variability and any concomittant topographic variability into one-dimensional bulk flow representation remains a fundamental challenge to be confronted in canopy turbulence research. Theoretically, planar averaging to the scale of interest should be applied to the time-averaged mean momentum balance; however, such averaging gives rise to covariance or dispersive terms produced by spatial correlations of time-averaged quantities that remain ‘unclosed’ or require parameterization. When the averaging scale is commensurate with few canopy heights, these covariances can be labeled as ‘micro-dispersive’ stresses. When averaging is intended to eliminate low-wavenumber topographic variations, we refer to these covariances as ‘macro-dispersive’ terms. Two flume experiments were used to explore the magnitude and sign of both micro- and macro-dispersive fluxes relative to their conventional Reynolds stresses counterparts: a rod-canopy with variable roughness density and a dense rod canopy situated on gentle hilly terrain. When compared to the conventional momentum flux, the micro-dispersive fluxes in the lowest layers of sparse canopies can be significant (∼50%). For dense canopies, the dispersive terms remain negligible when compared to the conventional momentum fluxes throughout. For the macro-dispersive fluxes, model calculations suggest that these terms can be neglected relative to the Reynolds stresses for a deep canopy situated on a narrow hill. For the region in which topographic variations can interact with the pressure, both model calculations and flume experiments suggest that the macro-dispersive fluxes cannot be neglected, and their value can be 20% of the typical Reynolds stresses.

The turbulent flow inside dense canopies is characterized by wake production and short-circuiting of the energy cascade. How these processes affect passive scalar con- centration variability in general and their spectral properties in particular remains a vexing problem. Progress on this problem is frustrated by the shortage of high resolution spatial concentration measurements, and by the lack of simplified analytical models that connect spectral modulations in the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) cascade to scalar spectra. Here, we report the first planar two-dimensional scalar concentration spectra (φcc) inside tall cano- pies derived from flow visualization experiments. These experiments were conducted within the deeper layers of a model canopy composed of densely arrayed cylinders welded to the bottom of a large recirculating water channel. We found that in the spectral region experi- encing wake production, the φcc exhibits directional scaling power laws. In the longitudinal direction (x), or the direction experiencing the largest drag force, the φcc(kx ) was steeper than k −5/3

Topography influences many aspects of forest-atmosphere carbon exchange; yet only a small number of studies have considered the role of topography on the structure of turbulence within and above vegetation and its effect on canopy photosynthesis and the measurement of net ecosystem exchange of CO2 (Nee) using flux towers. Here, we focus on the interplay between radiative transfer, flow dynamics for neutral stratification, and ecophysiological controls on CO2 sources and sinks within a canopy on a gentle cosine hill. We examine how topography alters the forest-atmosphere CO2 exchange rate when compared to uniform flat terrain using a newly developed first-order closure model that explicitly accounts for the flow dynamics, radiative transfer, and nonlinear eco physiological processes within a plant canopy. We show that variation in radiation and airflow due to topography causes only a minor departure in horizontally averaged and vertically integrated photosynthesis from their flat terrain values. However, topography perturbs the airflow and concentration fields in and above plant canopies, leading to significant horizontal and vertical advection of CO2. Advection terms in the conservation equation may be neglected in flow over homogeneous, flat terrain, and then Nee = Fc, the vertical turbulent flux of CO2. Model results suggest that vertical and horizontal advection terms are generally of opposite sign and of the same order as the biological sources and sinks. We show that, close to the hilltop, Fc departs by a factor of three compared to its flat terrain counterpart and that the horizontally averaged Fc-at canopy top differs by more than 20% compared to the flat-terrain case.

Second-order closure models for the canopy sublayer (CSL) employ aset of closure schemes developed for `free-air' flow equations andthen add extra terms to account for canopy related processes. Muchof the current research thrust in CSL closure has focused on thesecanopy modifications. Instead of offering new closure formulationshere, we propose a new mixing length model that accounts for basicenergetic modes within the CSL. Detailed flume experiments withcylindrical rods in dense arrays to represent a rigid canopy areconducted to test the closure model. We show that when this lengthscale model is combined with standard second-order closureschemes, first and second moments, triple velocity correlations,the mean turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate, and the wakeproduction are all well reproduced within the CSL provided thedrag coefficient (CD) is well parameterized. The maintheoretical novelty here is the analytical linkage betweengradient-diffusion closure schemes for the triple velocitycorrelation and non-local momentum transfer via cumulant expansionmethods. We showed that second-order closure models reproducereasonably well the relative importance of ejections and sweeps onmomentum transfer despite their local closure approximations.Hence, it is demonstrated that for simple canopy morphology (e.g.,cylindrical rods) with well-defined length scales, standard closureschemes can reproduce key flow statistics without much revision.When all these results are taken together, it appears that thepredictive skills of second-order closure models are not limitedby closure formulations; rather, they are limited by our abilityto independently connect the drag coefficient and the effectivemixing length to the canopy roughness density. With rapidadvancements in laser altimetry, the canopy roughness densitydistribution will become available for many terrestrialecosystems. Quantifying the sheltering effect, the homogeneity andisotropy of the drag coefficient, and more importantly, thecanonical mixing length, for such variable roughness density isstill lacking.

Dispersive flux terms are formed when the time-averaged meanmomentum equation is spatially averaged within the canopy volume.These fluxes represent a contribution to momentum transfer arisingfrom spatial correlations of the time-averaged velocity componentswithin a horizontal plane embedded in the canopy sublayer (CSL).Their relative importance to CSL momentum transfer is commonlyneglected in model calculations and in nearly all fieldmeasurement interpretations. Recent wind-tunnel studies suggestthat these fluxes may be important in the lower layers of thecanopy; however, no one study considered their importance acrossall regions of the canopy and for a wide range of canopy roughnessdensities. Using detailed laser Doppler anemometry measurementsconducted in a model canopy composed of cylinders within a largeflume, we demonstrate that the dispersive fluxes are onlysignificant (i.e., >10%) for sparse canopies. These fluxes arein the same direction as the turbulent flux in the lower layers ofthe canopy but in the opposite direction near the canopy top. Fordense canopies, we show that the dispersive fluxes are

The canonical form of atmospheric flows near theland surface, in the absence of a canopy, resembles a rough-wallboundary layer. However, in the presence of an extensive and densecanopy, the flow within and just above the foliage behaves as aperturbed mixing layer. To date, no analogous formulation existsfor intermediate canopy densities. Using detailed laser Dopplervelocity measurements conducted in an open channel over a widerange of canopy densities, a phenomenological model that describesthe structure of turbulence within the canopy sublayer (CSL) isdeveloped. The model decomposes the space within the CSL intothree distinct zones: the deep zone in which the flow field isshown to be dominated by vortices connected with vonKarman vortex streets, butperiodically interrupted by strong sweep events whose features areinfluenced by canopy density. The second zone, which is near thecanopy top, is a superposition of attached eddies andKelvin–Helmholtz waves produced by inflectional instability in themean longitudinal velocity profile. Here, the relative importanceof the mixing layer and attached eddies are shown to vary withcanopy density through a coefficient α. We show that therelative enhancement of turbulent diffusivity over its surface-layer value near the canopy top depends on the magnitude ofα. In the uppermost zone, the flow follows the classicalsurface-layer similarity theory. Finally, we demonstrate that thecombination of this newly proposed length scale and first-orderclosure models can accurately reproduce measured mean velocity andReynolds stresses for a wide range of roughness densities. Withrecent advancement in remote sensing of canopy morphology, thismodel offers a promising physically based approach to connect theland surface and the atmosphere without resorting to empiricalmomentum roughness lengths.

A new experimental technique for the investigation of near-wall turbulence using laser Doppler anemometry is presented, which allows an accurate measurement of the flow field very close to the wall, with good resolution and a high data rate. Such a technique is tested in a fully developed turbulent flow (with Reynolds numbers between 4,300 and 67,000) by carrying out a careful statistical analysis of the streamwise and wall-normal velocity components within the near-wall region, at distances from the wall ranging from approximately y+ = 1 to y+ = 100. The velocity profiles, Reynolds stresses and higher-order moments of the two-dimensional boundary layer are presented. The results, which are in agreement with the most recent data in the literature, testify the validity of the proposed experimental solution. Moreover, the accuracy of the results allows the friction velocity to be calculated as the intercept at the wall of the best linear fit of the total stress profile; in this way, an unambiguous examination of the normalized statistics is possible.