1. Canopy structure indicators of forest developmental stage, disturbance, and certain ecosystem functions Geoffrey Parker, David Roy Fitzjarrald Smithsonian Environmental Research Center Edgewater, MD 21037 Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, UAlbany SUNY Albany, NY 12203

2. Normalized profiles of wind speed (dotted line), CO 2 (solid line) and their product (i.e. the transport term) at the Old Growth Site, LBA. (from Staebler, 2003). Micrometeorological motivations: determining canopy mixing rates, displacement height, roughness length..…. U CO 2 Transport

3. Ecological objectives Introduce new metrics of canopy structure Examples of application at LBA sites Differences between treatments, sites Implications for radiation exchange

4. portable LIDAR for rapid determination of canopy structure Up-looking high-frequency rangefinder Deployed along transects at forest floor Estimates of volumetric surface area density with a spatial resolution 1-2 m Mean, variance, and spatial co-variation of several metrics

5. Lidar measurements (details): Riegl LD90-3100HS first-return laser rangefinder 890 nm; 1 kHz operation Mounted to the front of a frame, 1 m above the ground. Moving at walking speed through the forest, yields distances between measurements about 1 cm. Spot size of the laser beam is 4-6 cm at the ranges encountered here. Vertical profiles calculated using the overlap distribution described by MacArthur and Horn (1969). Resolution as averaged for this study: 1 m in vertical, 2 m in horizontal. Yields parallelepidep ‘voxels’ of 1X2X1 m in x,y,and z.

6. Desesperados……

7. Some derivable metrics Cover, estimates of canopy area index Maximum and average surface height Vertical distribution of surface area density Distribution of maximum heights Complexity of outer canopy surface Internal porosity Gap-size distribution

8. maximum height horizontal distance, m height, m

10. the outer canopy hypsograph The cumulative distribution of top heights, specifically (LOCH, local outer canopy height ) Not the same as the distribution of all surface areas Topographic analogy: elevations in a catchment basin

13. Outer canopy hypsograph in a chronosequence of eastern deciduous forests

15. LBA-ECO Santarem study area

16. km67 site— a pretty rough forest …

18. LBA-ECO Manaus Study area

19. Looks smooth from the air…..

20. Highly dissected terrain Manaus ‘ZF-2’ site

25. Some perspective from previous measurements…..

26. conclusions Canopy structure –similar within site, including logged and intact –differs between Tapajos and Manaus sites Canopy rugosity at Tapajos, landscape roughness at Manaus ZF2 Differences in transmitance and absorption profiles, radiation-use efficiency

27. many thanks Julio Tota, Cibelle Sampaio, Scott Saleska NASA: LBA-ECO CD-03 National Science Foundation NASA-Goddard, Global Canopy Program Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, SUNY Wind River Canopy Crane Research Facility, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center