A Psychrometric Temperature Correction for the Positive Bias Observed in Stomatal Conductance Measured by the Open Flow‐Through LI‐600 Porometer

The development of commercially available porometers has allowed for higher throughput measurement of stomatal conductance, but a body of evidence has suggested a persistent positive bias in their measurements relative to "reference" measurements from instrumentation based on infra-red gas analysis. We compiled a data set comprised of 25 angiosperm species, across a range of field conditions and found that the LI-COR LI-600, an open flow-through porometer, produced an exponentially increasing bias relative to the LI-COR LI-6800 infra-red gas analyser-based instrument in response to increasing stomatal conductance and decreasing relative humidity. This bias was minimal at lower stomatal conductance (below roughly 0.25 mol m <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mrow> <mml:mrow><mml:msup><mml:mrow></mml:mrow> <mml:mrow><mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:mrow> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> s <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mrow> <mml:mrow><mml:msup><mml:mrow></mml:mrow> <mml:mrow><mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn></mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:mrow> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> ), but was pronounced for larger values. We hypothesised that this bias is the result of the assumption of a constant air temperature throughout the flow stream used by the instrument software to estimate stomatal conductance from raw sensor measurements. We relaxed this assumption, and applied psychrometrics to augment the typical gas exchange equations with an additional energy balance constraint to solve for the temperature change throughout the air flow stream. We found that including this temperature difference corrects the computed transpiration and stomatal conductance values, and brings the porometer measurement into agreement with that of the infra-red gas analysis-based system. Software is provided to apply the correction to LI-600 output files. For future instrument design iterations, explicit measurement of temperature variation in the flow stream provides a potential opportunity for improvement in measurement accuracy at high stomatal conductance.