HR: 1340h
AN: B33B-1203    [Abstracts]
TI: Instability analysis on drainage flow over a complex terrain
AU: * Yi, C
EM: cyi@qc.cuny.edu
AF: Shool of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Queens College at City University of New York, 65-30 Kissena Blvd, Flushing, NY 11367, United States
AB: The turbulent transport processes that occur within canopies are extremely complex and have not been accurately represented in past models, especially for ecosystems with hilly or mountainous terrain. The stability analysis on the terrain-induced canopy flows is the key to understanding the introduction of pollutants into the atmosphere and the transfer of water from soil and vegetation to the atmosphere. We applied the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach to forest environments to simulate airflows within and above canopy. The results of the CFD experiments show three different dynamic regimes of topographic drainage flow that were simulated under different thermal-dynamic conditions: (1) Cold inflow induces drainage flow in the lower part of canopy and strong stratification of airflows within entire canopy; additionally, the model predicts that there is a super stable layer around the maximum LAD level, which is consistent with our canopy flow theory. This super stable layer minimizes vertical land-atmosphere exchange around the middle level of canopy. (2) Warm inflow causes the rapid flushing of land-atmosphere exchange at the location where two opposite air motions meet, this is called the ‘chimney phenomenon'. (3) The oscillation of canopy flow occurs as the inflow temperature is close to the environmental temperature. These CFD simulations are based on fully derived thermal and fluid dynamic equations. In order to clearly understand the physical mechanisms for the transfer between the different dynamic regimes, I utilized the nonlinear dynamics approach to derive the analytical instability conditions of terrain-induced flows from the simplified thermal-hydro-mechanical equations. The analytical derivations are tested against the CFD simulations. These analytical conditions provide a better understanding of transport problem in ecosystem- atmosphere exchanges of water, carbon dioxide, and energy over complex terrain.
DE: 1615 Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling (0412, 0414, 0793, 4805, 4912)
DE: 1631 Land/atmosphere interactions (1218, 1843, 3322)
DE: 1655 Water cycles (1836)
DE: 1813 Eco-hydrology
DE: 1851 Plant ecology (0476)
SC: Biogeosciences [B]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting