Tereno Project - Terrestrial environmental observatories

TERENO is a joint project of the Helmholtz Research Centers in collaboration with external partners. University of Trier conducts meteorological measurements at the Wüstebach site in collaboration with Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ).

Meteorological tower instrumentation at the TERENO Test site Wüstebach

The Wüstebach site is part of the Eifel/Lower Rhine Valley Observatory. Among other instrumentation, it houses a 38-m tower which projects the canopy top by about 8 m (see Fig. 1). The tower instrumentation provided by Karlsruhe Institut für Technologie (KIT) is intended to yield long-term monitoring of the atmosphere-canopy exchange processes of a typical mid-latitude forest. Intended applications are among others monitoring reactions of the forest to recent climate change and basic studies on turbulence over forests. As a primary goal, the site will serve as a reference for a nearby clear cut intended to accelerate succession from the current spruce plantation (picea abies) to natural vegetation dominated by beech.

To characterize the entire atmosphere-canopy exchange process, variables are measured above, within an below the vegetation. Instrumentation is organized in three segments (see Fig. 2):

  1. Flux (budget) measurements above the canopy:
    Eddy-covariance measurements of heat, momentum, CO2 and water vapor (planned: radiation budget of longwave, shortwave and photosynthetically active radiation)
  2. Vertical profile measurements across the canopy at 6 levels:
    Temperature, humidity, wind speed /direction (planned: CO2, N2O via closed path system)
  3. Spatially averaging measurement of surface and soil properties around the tower:
    Surface temperature, stem temperature, soil temperature and moisture (3x6 levels), snow depth (planned: precipitation)
Abb. 1: Sicht von der Turmspitze
Abb.2: Turm- u. Bodenmessungen
Abb. 3: Bodenmessungen