The Energy Balance Microclimate of a Suburban Lawn

Abstract

A suburban lawn was instrumented in order to study its energy balance components during summer conditions. Results indicate that substantial latent heat fluxes can be experienced with values exceeding net radiation during portions of some days. On average, the energy balance fluxes were similar to those found in previous studies for rural grass surfaces. Since lawns form a large portion of the suburban landscape, this implies that suburban evapotranspiration is an important and perhaps dominant term in the energy balance.