On the Canopy Flow Index of a Tropical Forest

Abstract

The usefulness of the canopy flow index concept is demonstrated for a two-story evergreen tropical forest. A sample of about 2500 wind profiles was utilized. It encompasses a large range of ambient wind conditions and spans the whole monsoon cycle in Southeast Asia. It was found that the use of two canopy flow indices (one for the upper and one for the lower canopy) would be necessary to simulate teh average canopy flow. For the upper canopy, an average value of 4.04 was obtained; for the lower canopy an index of 1.77 was computed. The indices seem to be independent of the ambient wind speed (if 2 m s (expn -1) is exceeded), yet strongly dependent on wind direction.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1982
Accession Number
ADA115339

Entities

People

  • J. F. Moses
  • R. T. Pinker

Organizations

  • University of Maryland

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Flow
  • Boundary Layer
  • Equations
  • Flow
  • Forests
  • Layers
  • Measurement
  • Meteorology
  • Plants
  • Southeast Asia
  • Tropical Forests
  • Turbulent Flow
  • Universities
  • Wind
  • Wind Direction
  • Wind Tunnels
  • Wind Velocity

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Forest Ecology
  • Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Modeling, Data Assimilation, and Flux Boundary Layers
  • Regression Analysis.