Detection of turbulent coherent motions in a forest canopy. Part II: Time-scales and conditional averages

International audienceTurbulent exchanges between plant canopies and the atmosphere are known to be strongly affected by intermittent coherent motions, which appear on time traces of turbulent variables as periodic, large-amplitude excursions from the mean. Detecting these features requires objective and powerful signal analysis techniques. We investigate here the possibilities offered by the recently developedwavelet transform, presented in a companion paper. For this purpose, a set of data acquired in a 13.5 m high pine forest in southwestern France was used, which provided time series of wind velocities and air temperature recorded at two levels simultaneously, under moderately unstable conditions. Firstly, a duration scale of the active part of coherent motions was estimated from the wavelet variance. Then, we focused on the detection itself of large-scale features; several wavelet functions were tested, and the results compared with those obtained from more classical conditional sampling methods such as VITA and WAG. A mean time interval Δ=1.8h/u * (h being the canopy height andu * the friction velocity) between contiguous coherent motions was obtained. The features extracted from the various traces and ensemble-averaged over 30 min periods appeared very similar throughout the four hours of data studied. They provided a dynamic description of the ejection-sweep process, readily observable at both levels. An alternate Reynolds decomposition of the instantaneous turbulent fields, using the conditionally averaged signals, allowed the relative importance of large- and small-scale contributions to momentum and heat fluxes to be estimated. The results were found to be in good agreement with comparable studies

Detection of turbulent coherent motions in a forest canopy. Part I: Wavelet analysis

International audienceTurbulence measurements performed at high frequencies yield data revealing intermittent and multi-scale processes. Analysing time series of turbulent variables thus requires extensive numerical treatment capable, for instance, of performing pattern recognition. This is particularly important in the case of the atmospheric surface layer and specifically in the vicinity of plant canopies, where largescale coherent motions play a major role in the dynamics of turbulent transport processes. In this paper, we examine the ability of the recently developedwavelet transform to extract information on turbulence structure from time series of wind velocities and scalars. It is introduced as a local transform performing a time-frequency representation of a given signal by a specific wavelet function; unlike the Fourier transform, it is well adapted to studying non-stationary signals. After the principles and the most relevant mathematical properties of wavelet functions and transform are given, we present various applications of relevance for our purpose: determination of time-scales, data reconstruction and filtering, and jump detection. Several wavelet functions are inter-compared, using simple artificially generated data presenting large-scale features similar to those observed over plant canopies. Their respective behaviour in the time-frequency domain leads us to assign a specific range of applications for each

Wavelet analysis of diurnal and nocturnal turbulence above a maize crop

International audienc

On coherent structures in turbulence above and within agricultural plant canopies

International audienceThe existence of ramp structures in scalar fields such as air temperature has been reported in laboratory flows over smooth and rough walls, in the atmospheric boundary layer and in flows in and above forests. They have been recognized as the signature of coherent turbulent structures. The aim of this paper is to present some observations and analyses of these features in the agricultural environment. Evidence is given from samples of time traces recorded during experiments conducted in maize crops and orchards. Ramps of air temperature, surface temperature, humidity and CO2 concentrations are shown to occur under stable, neutral and unstable conditions. Ramp structures are more apparent above short canopies than within them, in contrast to taller tree canopies where ramps are seen most clearly near the canopy top. Under stable conditions, they are sometimes found in association with trapped gravity waves. It is demonstrated that the frequency of occurrence of the coherent structures is related to a wind shear scale characteristic of the canopy flow