Continuous Measurement of Canopy Fluorescence at Harvard Forest 2013-2014

Vegetation fluorescence, a very small amount of radiation emitted as a byproduct of photosynthesis, is a direct indicator of plant physiology. Monitoring the solar-induced plant fluorescence provides a powerful tool to understand how the plant photosynthesis responds to environmental factors such as solar radiation, temperature and precipitation as well as to stress and disturbance. We installed the ground-based fluorescence observation system to explore the Franhofer lines in the solar spectrum to monitor the canopy fluorescence. Fluorescence data could also be used to link with eddy covariance data in flux towers, the digital camera data and solar radiation data, providing a good supplementary to numerous data collected at Harvard Forest.