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Nature-based Climate Solutions (NbCS) are managed alterations to ecosystems designed to increase carbon sequestration or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While they have growing public and private support, the realizable benefits and unintended consequences of NbCS are not well understood. At regional scales where policy decisions are often made, NbCS benefits are estimated from soil and tree survey data that can miss important carbon sources and sinks within an ecosystem, and do not reveal the biophysical impacts of NbCS for local water and energy cycles. The only direct observations of ecosystem-scale carbon fluxes, e.g., by eddy covariance flux towers, have not yet been systematically assessed for what they can tell us about NbCS potentials, and state-of-the-art remote sensing products and land-surface models are not yet being widely used to inform NbCS policy making or implementation. As a result, there is a critical mismatch between the point- and tree- scale data most often used to assess NbCS benefits and impacts, the ecosystem and landscape scales where NbCS projects are implemented, and the regional to continental scales most relevant to policy making. Here, we propose a research agenda to confront these gaps using data and tools that have long been used to understandmore »the mechanisms driving ecosystem carbon and energy cycling, but have not yet been widely applied to NbCS. We outline steps for creating robust NbCS assessments at both local to regional scales that are informed by ecosystem-scale observations, and which consider concurrent biophysical impacts, future climate feedbacks, and the need for equitable and inclusive NbCS implementation strategies. We contend that these research goals can largely be accomplished by shifting the scales at which pre-existing tools are applied and blended together, although we also highlight some opportunities for more radical shifts in approach.« less

Abstract. During the Chequamegon Heterogeneous Ecosystem Energy-balance Study Enabled by a High-density Extensive Array of Detectors 2019 (CHEESEHEAD19) field campaign, held in the summer of 2019 in northern Wisconsin, USA, active and passive ground-based remote sensing instruments were deployed to understand the response of the planetary boundary layer to heterogeneous land surface forcing. These instruments include radar wind profilers, microwave radiometers, atmospheric emitted radiance interferometers, ceilometers, high spectral resolution lidars, Doppler lidars, and collaborative lower-atmospheric mobile profiling systems that combine several of these instruments. In this study, these ground-based remote sensing instruments are used to estimate the height of the daytime planetary boundary layer, and their performance is compared against independent boundary layer depth estimates obtained from radiosondes launched as part of the field campaign. The impact of clouds (in particular boundary layer clouds) on boundary layer depth estimations is also investigated. We found that while all instruments are overall able to provide reasonable boundary layer depth estimates, each of them shows strengths and weaknesses under certain conditions. For example, radar wind profilers perform well during cloud-free conditions, and microwave radiometers and atmospheric emitted radiance interferometers have a very good agreement during all conditions but are limited by the smoothnessmore »of the retrieved thermodynamic profiles. The estimates from ceilometers and high spectral resolution lidars can be hindered by the presence of elevated aerosol layers or clouds, and the multi-instrument retrieval from the collaborative lower atmospheric mobile profiling systems can be constricted to a limited height range in low-aerosol conditions.« less

Abstract Large-eddy simulations (LES) are an important tool for investigating the longstanding energy-balance-closure problem, as they provide continuous, spatially-distributed information about turbulent flow at a high temporal resolution. Former LES studies reproduced an energy-balance gap similar to the observations in the field typically amounting to 10–30% for heights on the order of 100 m in convective boundary layers even above homogeneous surfaces. The underestimation is caused by dispersive fluxes associated with large-scale turbulent organized structures that are not captured by single-tower measurements. However, the gap typically vanishes near the surface, i.e. at typical eddy-covariance measurement heights below 20 m, contrary to the findings from field measurements. In this study, we aim to find a LES set-up that can represent the correct magnitude of the energy-balance gap close to the surface. Therefore, we use a nested two-way coupled LES, with a fine grid that allows us to resolve fluxes and atmospheric structures at typical eddy-covariance measurement heights of 20 m. Under different stability regimes we compare three different options for lower boundary conditions featuring grassland and forest surfaces, i.e. (1) prescribed surface fluxes, (2) a land-surface model, and (3) a land-surface model in combination with a resolved canopy. We show that the use ofmore »prescribed surface fluxes and a land-surface model yields similar dispersive heat fluxes that are very small near the vegetation top for both grassland and forest surfaces. However, with the resolved forest canopy, dispersive heat fluxes are clearly larger, which we explain by a clear impact of the resolved canopy on the relationship between variance and flux–variance similarity functions.« less

Abstract Sexual harassment in field settings brings unique challenges for prevention and response, as field research occurs outside “typical” workplaces, often in remote locations that create additional safety concerns and new team dynamics. We report on a project that has 1) trained field project participants to recognize, report, and confront sexual harassment, and 2) investigated the perceptions, attitudes, and experiences of field researchers regarding sexual harassment. Pre-campaign surveys from four major, multi-institutional, domestic and international field projects indicate that the majority of sexual harassment reported prior to the field campaigns was hostile work environment harassment, and women were more likely to be the recipients, on average reporting 2-3 incidents each. The majority of those disclosing harassment indicated that they coped with past experiences by avoiding their harasser or downplaying incidents. Of the incidences reported (47) in post-campaign surveys of the four field teams, all fell under the category of hostile work environment and included incidents of verbal, visual, and physical harassment. Women’s harassment experiences were perpetrated by men 100% of the time, and the majority of the perpetrators were in more senior positions than the victims. Men’s harassment experiences were perpetrated by a mix of women and men, and themore »majority came from those at the same position of seniority. Post-project surveys indicate that the training programs (taking place before the field projects) helped participants come away with more positive than negative emotions and perceptions of the training, the leadership, and their overall experiences on the field campaign.« less

Abstract The Chequamegon Heterogeneous Ecosystem Energy-Balance Study Enabled by a High-Density Extensive Array of Detectors 2019 (CHEESEHEAD19) is an ongoing National Science Foundation project based on an intensive field campaign that occurred from June to October 2019. The purpose of the study is to examine how the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) responds to spatial heterogeneity in surface energy fluxes. One of the main objectives is to test whether lack of energy balance closure measured by eddy covariance (EC) towers is related to mesoscale atmospheric processes. Finally, the project evaluates data-driven methods for scaling surface energy fluxes, with the aim to improve model–data comparison and integration. To address these questions, an extensive suite of ground, tower, profiling, and airborne instrumentation was deployed over a 10 km × 10 km domain of a heterogeneous forest ecosystem in the Chequamegon–Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin, United States, centered on an existing 447-m tower that anchors an AmeriFlux/NOAA supersite (US-PFa/WLEF). The project deployed one of the world’s highest-density networks of above-canopy EC measurements of surface energy fluxes. This tower EC network was coupled with spatial measurements of EC fluxes from aircraft; maps of leaf and canopy properties derived from airborne spectroscopy, ground-based measurements ofmore »plant productivity, phenology, and physiology; and atmospheric profiles of wind, water vapor, and temperature using radar, sodar, lidar, microwave radiometers, infrared interferometers, and radiosondes. These observations are being used with large-eddy simulation and scaling experiments to better understand submesoscale processes and improve formulations of subgrid-scale processes in numerical weather and climate models.« less