A new UAS System for Airborne Eddy Covariance Measurements of Heat and Carbon Fluxes

• Main Authors: Sachs, T., Zöllner, M.
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Moses; permafrost
• Online Access: https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_5000478; https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_5000478_1/component/file_5000479/2019_AGU_SachsZ%C3%B6llner+Poster.pdf

It has become increasingly clear in the past years that fully understanding greenhouse gas emission from highly complex landscapes such as wetlands and permafrost will benefit from measurements on a variety of scales. Given the scarcity of sites in a vast region with limited access on one hand, and the well-documented spatial and temporal variability of fluxes on the other hand, combining long-term, continuous records from individual sites with larger scale surveys of the spatial variability could help to reduce biases and uncertainties in the bottom-up estimates. Several projects in the past years included aircraft measurements of GHG concentrations or even fluxes and succeeded in mapping permafrost GHG fluxes over large regions at resolutions down to 100 m. However, the cost and complexity of such operations allows for few temporal snapshots only. New UAS and lightweight sensor technology now allows for an increase in aerial survey frequency at a fraction of the cost of aircraft operations. As part of the Modular Observing Solutions for Earth Sciences (MOSES) infrastructure project, we equipped a Wingcopter vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) fixed-wing UAV with instrumentation suitable for airborne eddy covariance flux measurements of latent and sensible heat as well as CO2, with integration of a CH4 sensor being work in progress. The range of about 80 km will allow to significantly extend flux tower footprints on a regular basis and help determine flux tower site representativeness in a larger landscape context. We will introduce the platform and payload as well as the initial system characterization.