Performance of eddy-covariance measurements in fetch-limited applications

When estimating gas fluxes by means of the eddy covariance (EC) technique, measurement representativeness is ensured by the availability of an adequate fetch. In applications over spatially limited fetches, it is possible to constrain the sensed source area by shortening the measurement height, but this comes at the cost of potentially violating some fundamental assumptions of the method or introducing significant measurement errors. In addition, reliability of footprint models when applied to measurements close to the surface is still debatable. In this manuscript, we investigate whether it is possible to use the EC method for determining the surface-atmosphere exchange over spatially limited ecosystems on horizontal scales of about 100 m. The objectives are (1) to determine the adequate positioning of the instruments in the atmospheric boundary layer, (2) to assess the quality of measurement in search of potential biases, (3) establish whether the source area is sufficiently constrained, (4) and evaluate the performances of some popular footprint models in such conditions. Most notably, we carried out an experiment to assess the footprint of two low EC systems and to evaluate the prediction of the selected footprint models against empirical data.