Credit hours
In-class work per week |
Practice per week |
Credits |
Duration |
Total |
4 |
2 |
10 |
15 weeks |
150 hours |
Instructor
Humberto Ribeiro da Rocha
Objective
Describe processes of radiation, momentum, heat, water and CO2 surface exchanges between
the soil-vegetation system and the atmosphere, with emphasys on the hydrological cycle, the
energy balance and the carbon cycle, at distinct temporal and spatial scales: concepts, simple
mathematical models and field observational methods.
Content
(1) Conceptual sense of biosphere and climate: spatial and temporal scales; hidroclimatic
ecossistem services. (2) Radiation transfer in the vegetation system. Surface balance of solar
and terrestrial radiation. Absorption of solar and photosinthetically active radiation in the leaf
and canopy scales. Albedo and leaf area index. Examples. (3) Momentum transfer and wind
shear in the vegetation canopy. (4) Carbon cycle: global, leaf and ecosystem scales. Plant and
ecosystem net and gross primary productivity. Atmospheric and water limitants to
productivity. Example in brazillian systems. (5) Surface energy balance. Cases in brazillian
native and agricultural systems (6) Atmospheric fluxes of heat, water and CO2 in the
vegetation. Surface energy partition. Stomatal condutance: measurement and simple models.
Evapotranspiration ET: transpiration, soil evaporation, rainfall interception, ocult rainfall.
Potential evapotranspiration methods. Theoretical and observation ET methods: turbulent
bulk transfer coefficients, Bowen ratio, eddy covariance; Penman-Monteith. Soil CO2 efflux
simple model. Examples of fluxes in brazillian systems (7) Surface hydrological cycle. Soil types,
soil moisture and soil water potential, physical properties (porosity, retention curve, hydraulic
conductivity). Soil moisture measurement. Cases in brazillian soils. Simplified water balance at
the parcel scale. Soil water dynamics. Vertical water flux in the unsaturated zone, Infiltration.
Water balance at plot and watershed scales. Runoff generation. (8) Dependence of climate and
vegetation: local, regional, continental and global scales. Microclimate in urban, forest and
crop areas. (9) Computational practice: simulation of soil-vegetation-atmosphere system
(Simple Biosphere Model).
Bibliography
Bonan, G. (2003). Ecological Climatology, concepts and applications, Cambridge Univ. Press.
Stull, R. (1993). An introduction to boundary layer meteorology. Kluwer Acad Publishers.
Oke, T. (1987). Boundary Layer Climates (2nd ed.).London, Routledge.
Wallace and Hobbs 2ª ed. 2006. Atmospheric Sciences, an introductory survey.
Roland Stull, 1988. An introduction to boundary layer meteorology.
McMahon, T. A. , et al.. Estimating actual, potential, reference crop and pan evaporation using
standard meteorological data: a pragmatic synthesis. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 17, 1331–1363,
2013
Sellers, P.J. et al. (1996). Journal of Climate, 9: 676-705.
Dingman, S. L. (2015) Physical Hydrology, 3rd edition. Waveland Press, Long Grove, Illinois.