A graph from the study.
This figure demonstrates the influences of sunlight spectral resolution on in-plant canopy photolysis of molecules such as ozone (O3), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitrate radical (NO3), nitrous acid (HONO), and formaldehyde (HCHO). The vertical axis represents the normalized (to the canopy top), canopy-mean reduction in photolysis due to attenuation of spectral sunlight within the canopy as a function of waveband resolution. In the horizontal axis, the number of wavebands that the sunlight spectral region is broken into increases logarithmically. Each color line corresponds to the photolysis of a given molecular reaction, with a few important reactions highlighted in color and several others shown in grey. The vertical dotted lines represent the region where increasing sunlight spectral resolution further has limited impact on the results for most molecular reactions. For the majority of photochemical reactions in plant canopies, knowledge of the spectral sunlight is absolutely necessary to avoid overestimates in-canopy photolysis as currently done with most current numerical models that employ broadband sunlight. Credit: Moon and Fuentes [2024], Figure 9
Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.
Source: Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems

Radiative transfer (RT) in plant canopies is an important process to represent in land surface models. Canopy RT determines how much global solar energy is reflected (albedo) and how much is absorbed by canopy (foliage and stem) elements and the ground (soil) surface.

Moon and Fuentes [2024] introduce a new method for high-resolution spectral solar radiative transfer modeling in plant canopies, addressing critical gaps in current ecological and environmental numerical modeling. This rigorous methodological approach, comparing various radiative transfer models, is particularly noteworthy for its potential to enhance accuracy in predicting photochemical processes essential for climate modeling and ecological assessments.

This work is especially relevant and valuable for broad scientific and practical applications in environmental science and climate change studies in regions where the land surface is dominated by tall and dense forest canopies.

Citation: Moon, Z., & Fuentes, J. D. (2024). Evaluating numerical methods to investigate spectral solar radiative transfer in plant canopies. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 16, e2023MS004136. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023MS004136

—Jiwen Fan, Editor, JAMES

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