Monitoring Amazonian carbon dioxide from a 320-meter tower
SEP 22, 2010
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.024693
Nature : Since 1958 an observatory on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea has monitored the seasonal swings and steady rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Hawaii’s remote location and Mauna Kea’s barren landscape ensure that the measurements represent an average for Earth’s Northern Hemisphere. But if you want to monitor the carbon dioxide emitted and absorbed by an individual forest, then your sensor needs to be high enough above the trees that it gathers data from a representative sample of the forest. It turns out that “high enough” corresponds to around 300 meters. Nature‘s Jeff Tollefson reports on the Amazonian Tall Tower Observatory, an $11-million project to build and operate a monitoring station atop a 320-meter tower in the Brazilian state of Amazonas.
© 2010 American Institute of Physics
