Determining the contribution of vertical advection to the net ecosystem exchange at Hyytiälä forest, Finland

In nighttime the importance of advection processes to full carbon balance estimated by micrometeorological methods is pronounced. The vertical advection needs the determination of mean vertical velocity which can be obtained from planar fitting, which is the determination of mean local streamline coordinates based on the statistics of the wind field measured over long periods. We tested the utilization of planar-fitting based vertical advection using long-term eddy covariance and CO₂ concentration gradient data at SMEAR II field station (Hyytiålå, Southern Finland). The vertical-advection corrected carbon balance, without any friction velocity filtering, agrees very well with those obtained by filtering and gap-filling procedure, and those by chambers and ecosystem model. Although no direct measurements for horizontal advection is available, the results indicate minor significance of horizontal advection in the studied cases.