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Analysis diagram of the energy fluxes estimated during a dry season at a Tropical Wet Forest in Costa Rica.
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Abstract. Tropical wet forests are complex ecosystems with a large number of plant species. These environments are characterized by a high water availability throughout the whole year and a complex canopy structure. However, how the different sections of the canopy contribute to total evaporation is poorly understood. The aim of this work is to est...
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... latent heat flux (ρλE, W m −2 ) was determined using the energy balance equation (Equation 1) from the ground up to 2 m, 8 m and 43 m ( Figure 3). This equation is based on the vertical transport of heat, neglecting the advected energy due to the lack of more detailed measurements (e.g, eddy covariance system). ...
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Tropical wet forests are complex ecosystems with a large number of plant species. These environments are characterized by a high water availability
throughout the whole year and a complex canopy structure. However, how the different sections of the canopy contribute to total evaporation is poorly
understood. The aim of this work is to estimate the...
Citations
... Remarkably, the coincidence of ground and soil water along the CR MWL ( Figure 10A), suggests no strong evaporative effect and that there is a single soil water pool, rather than two soil water pools as suggested by the ecohydrological separation hypothesis (mobile vs. immobile water) reported by other studies worldwide (e.g., Evaristo et al., 2015;Luo et al., 2019). These results are coincident with those from a recent article by Jiménez-Rodríguez et al. (2019), who showed a lack of evaporation and coincidence with the LMWL of soil samples of a wet lowland forest of Costa Rica during the dry season. Nevertheless, the preliminary soil water isotope data presented here for rainforests heavily influenced by Caribbeantype rainfall regimes, invokes more in depth studies with higher sampling frequency, and across other tropical ecosystems whereby d-excess or lc-excess values may indicate stronger evaporation controls in the vadose zone. ...
... Studies reveal that the isotopic composition of fog is featured by an enriched signal compared to rainfall because of differences in condensation and that the deviation between fog and rainfall isotopes are enlarged in presence of rainfall linked with synoptic systems, in contrast with more locally generated fog (Scholl et al., 2010). Studies on isotope ecohydrology across the tropics are emerging, and so far they have addressed: plant water uptake and partitioning (Meinzer et al., 1999;Evaristo et al., 2016;De Wispelaere et al., 2017;De Deurwaerder et al., 2018;Bodé et al., 2020;Jiménez-Rodríguez et al., 2019), soil water dynamics and mixing (Mosquera et al., 2020), and soil evaporative losses (Hasselquist et al., 2018). Most of these studies come from the dry tropics; however, research coming from mountain and wet rainforest environments, as well as highland Páramos, are particularly scarce. ...
Tropical regions cover approximately 36% of the Earth’s landmass. These regions are home to 40% of the world’s population, which is projected to increase to over 50% by 2030 under a remarkable climate variability scenario often exacerbated by El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and other climate teleconnections. In the tropics, ecohydrological conditions are typically under the influence of complex land-ocean-atmosphere interactions that produce a dynamic cycling of mass and energy reflected in a clear partition of water fluxes. Here, we present a review of 7 years of a concerted and continuous water stable isotope monitoring across Costa Rica, including key insights learned, main methodological advances and limitations (both in experimental designs and data analysis), potential data gaps, and future research opportunities with a humid tropical perspective. The uniqueness of the geographic location of Costa Rica within the mountainous Central America Isthmus, receiving moisture inputs from the Caribbean Sea (windward) and the Pacific Ocean (complex leeward topography), and experiencing strong ENSO events, poses a clear advantage for the use of isotopic variations to underpin key drivers in ecohydrological responses. In a sequential approach, isotopic variations are analyzed from moisture transport, rainfall generation, and groundwater/surface connectivity to Bayesian and rainfall-runoff modeling. The overarching goal of this review is to provide a robust humid tropical example with a progressive escalation from common water isotope observations to more complex modeling outputs and applications to enhance water resource management in the tropics.
... The monitoring was carried out at La Selva Biological Station (LSBS) on the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica (N: 10°26 0 -W: 83°59 0 ). This station registered a mean annual precipitation of 4351 mm yr −1 , a mean annual temperature of 26.3 • C, 30 and a mean daily temperature difference of 9.5 • C. A short dry season is present in LSBS between February and April every year, and it is characterized by a reduction in the precipitation without vegetation experiencing a soil water deficit Lieberman and Lieberman, 1987;Loescher et al., 2005). LSBS is covered by a matrix of old growth and secondary 2 https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2020-14 ...
... The blurriness of each picture varies depending on the humidity conditions. Special care was taken to prevent the erroneous classification of photographs 30 affected by a fogged-up lens. This category is called "mist" from now onwards (Figure 2 (ω, s −1 ), time (t) in s and φ (-) as a constant for phase change. ...
Abstract. Forest evaporation exports a vast amount of water vapor from land ecosystems into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, evaporation during rain events is neglected or considered of minor importance in dense ecosystems. Air convection moves the water vapor upwards leading the formation of large invisible vapor plumes, while the identification of visible vapor plumes has not been studied yet. This work describes the formation process of vapor plumes in a tropical wet forest as evidence of evaporation processes happening during rain events. In the dry season of 2018 at La Selva Biological Station (LSBS) in Costa Rica it was possible to spot visible vapor plumes within the forest canopy. The combination of time-lapse videos at the canopy top with meteorological measurements along the canopy profile allowed to identify the conditions required for this process to happen. This phenomenon happened only during rain events, where evaporation measurements showed contributions of 1.8 mm d<sup>−1</sup>. Visible vapor plumes during day time occurred on the presence of precipitation ( P ), air convection identified by the temperature gradient (Δϴ<sub>v</sub> / Δ z ) at 2 m height, and a lifting condensation level at 43 m height ( Z <sub>lcl.43</sub>) smaller than 100 m.
