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Considerable amounts and varieties of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) are exchanged between vegetation and the surrounding air. These BVOCs play key ecological and atmospheric roles that must be adequately represented for accurately modeling the coupled biosphere-atmosphere-climate earth system. One key uncertainty in existing models is the response of BVOC fluxes to an important global change process: drought. We describe the diurnal and seasonal variation in isoprene, monoterpene, and methanol fluxes from a temperate forest ecosystem before, during, and after an extreme 2012 drought event in the Ozark region of the central USA. BVOC fluxes were dominated by isoprene, which attained high emission rates of up to 35.4 mg m(-2)  h(-1) at midday. Methanol fluxes were characterized by net deposition in the morning, changing to a net emission flux through the rest of the daylight hours. Net flux of CO2 reached its seasonal maximum approximately a month earlier than isoprenoid fluxes, which highlights the differential response of photosynthesis and isoprenoid emissions to progressing drought conditions. Nevertheless, both processes were strongly suppressed under extreme drought, although isoprene fluxes remained relatively high compared to reported fluxes from other ecosystems. Methanol exchange was less affected by drought throughout the season, confirming the complex processes driving biogenic methanol fluxes. The fraction of daytime (7-17 h) assimilated carbon released back to the atmosphere combining the three BVOCs measured was 2% of gross primary productivity (GPP) and 4.9% of net ecosystem exchange (NEE) on average for our whole measurement campaign, while exceeding 5% of GPP and 10% of NEE just before the strongest drought phase. The meganv2.1 model correctly predicted diurnal variations in fluxes driven mainly by light and temperature, although further research is needed to address model BVOC fluxes during drought events.

Ecosystem fluxes of isoprene emissions were measured during the majority of the 2011 growing season at the University of Missouri's Baskett Wildlife Research and Education Area in central Missouri, USA (38.7° N, 92.2° W). This broadleaf deciduous forest is typical of forests common in the Ozarks region of the central United States. The goal of the isoprene flux measurements was to test our understanding of the controls on isoprene emission from the hourly to the seasonal timescale using a state-of-the-art emission model, MEGAN (Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature). Isoprene emission rates from the forest were very high with a maximum of 53.3mgm-2h-1 (217nmolm-2s-1), which to our knowledge exceeds all other reports of canopy-scale isoprene emission. The fluxes showed a clear dependence on the previous temperature and light regimes, which was successfully captured by the existing algorithms in MEGAN. During a period of drought, MEGAN was unable to reproduce the time-dependent response of isoprene emission to water stress. Overall, the performance of MEGAN was robust and could explain 90% of the observed variance in the measured fluxes, but the response of isoprene emission to drought stress is a major source of uncertainty. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

Abstract: Ecosystem fluxes of isoprene emissions were measured during the majority of the 2011 growing season at the University of Missouri's Baskett Wildlife Research and Education Area in central Missouri, USA (38.7° N, 92.2° W). This broadleaf deciduous forest is typical of forests common in the Ozarks region of the central United States. The goal of the isoprene flux measurements was to test our understanding of the controls on isoprene emission from the hourly to the seasonal timescale using a state-of-the-art emission model, MEGAN (Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature). Isoprene emission rates from the forest were very high with a maximum of 53.3 mg m−2 h−1 (217 nmol m−2 s−1), which to our knowledge exceeds all other reports of canopy-scale isoprene emission. The fluxes showed a clear dependence on the previous temperature and light regimes, which was successfully captured by the existing algorithms in MEGAN. During a period of drought, MEGAN was unable to reproduce the time-dependent response of isoprene emission to water stress. Overall, the performance of MEGAN was robust and could explain 90% of the observed variance in the measured fluxes, but the response of isoprene emission to drought stress is a major source of uncertainty. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]