The current emphasis on global climate studies has led the scientific community to set up a number of sites for measuring the long‐term biosphere‐atmosphere net CO2 exchange (net ecosystem exchange, NEE). Partitioning this flux into its elementary components, net assimilation (FA), and respiration (FR), remains necessary in order to get a better understanding of biosphere functioning and design better surface exchange models. Noting that FR and FA have different isotopic signatures, we evaluate the potential of isotopic 13CO2 measurements in the air (combined with CO2 flux and concentration measurements) to partition NEE into FR and FA on a routine basis. The study is conducted at a temperate coniferous forest where intensive isotopic measurements in air, soil, and biomass were performed in summer 1997. The multilayer soil‐vegetation‐atmosphere transfer model MuSICA is adapted to compute 13CO2 flux and concentration profiles. Using MuSICA as a “perfect” simulator and taking advantage of the very dense spatiotemporal resolution of the isotopic data set (341 flasks over a 24‐hour period) enable us to test each hypothesis and estimate the performance of the method. The partitioning works better in midafternoon when isotopic disequilibrium is strong. With only 15 flasks, i.e., two 13CO2 nighttime profiles (to estimate the isotopic signature of FR) and five daytime measurements (to perform the partitioning) we get mean daily estimates of FR and FA that agree with the model within 15–20%. However, knowledge of the mesophyll conductance seems crucial and may be a limitation to the method.

This paper considers whether a passive isometric input device, such as a ¢ ¤ £ ¦ ¥ § © ¥ TM , used together with visual feedback, could provide the operator with a pseudo-haptic feedback. For this aim, two psychophysical experiments have been conducted. The first experiment consisted of a compliance discrimination, between two virtual springs hand-operated by means of the ¢ ¤ £ ¥ § © ¥ TM. In this experiment, the stiffness (or compliance) JND turned out to be 6%. The second experiment assessed stiffness discrimination between a virtual spring and the equivalent spring in reality. In this case, the stiffness (or compliance) JND was found to be 13.4%. These results are consistent with previous outcomes on manual discrimination of compliance. Consequently, this consistency reveals that the passive apparatus that was used can, to some extent, simulate haptic information. In addition, a final test indicated that the proprioceptive sense of the subjects was blurred by visual feedback. This gave them the illusion of using a non isometric device.

[1] Stable CO 2 isotope measurements are increasingly used to partition the net CO 2 exchange between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere in terms of nonfoliar respiration (F R ) and net photosynthesis (F A ) in order to better understand the variations of this exchange. However, the accuracy of the partitioning strongly depends on the isotopic disequilibrium between these two gross fluxes, and a rigorous estimation of the errors on F A and F R is needed. In this study, we account for and propagate uncertainties on all terms in the mass balance and isotopic mass balance equations for CO 2 in order to get accurate estimates of the errors on F A and F R . We apply our method to a maritime pine forest in the southwest of France. Nighttime Keeling plots are used to estimate the 13 C and 18 O isotopic signature of F R (d R ), and for both isotopes the a priori uncertainty associated with this term is estimated to be around 2% at our site. Using d 13 C-CO 2 and [CO 2 ] measurements, we then show that the uncertainty on instantaneous values of F A and F R can be as large as 4 mmol m À2 s À1 . Even if we could get more accurate estimates of the net CO 2 flux, the isoflux, and the isotopic signatures of F A and F R , this uncertainty would not be significantly reduced because the isotopic disequilibrium between F A and F R is too small, around 2-3%. With d 18 O-CO 2 and [CO 2 ] measurements the uncertainty associated with the gross fluxes lies also around 4 mmol m À2 s À1 but could be dramatically reduced if we were able to get more accurate estimates of the CO 18 O isoflux and the associated discrimination during photosynthesis. This is because the isotopic disequilibrium between F A and F R is large, of the order of 12-17%. The isotopic disequilibrium between F A and F R and the uncertainty on d R vary among ecosystems and over the year. Our approach should help to choose the best strategy to study the carbon budget of a given ecosystem using stable isotopes.