HFT-3

ISFS uses REBS heat flux plates (HFT)  to determine the heat flux into the top layer of soil.  These typically are deployed at a depth of 5cm and a correction applied to obtain the heat flux at the top of the soil (needed for the total surface energy balance) using other sensors.  A PIC-based front end microprocessor digitizes the data and applies the manufacturer's calibration.

ISFS also applies a Phillip correction to HFT data in post-procesing and has chosen these sensors since the magnitude of this correction for them is relatively small due to their size.  

These sensors are used to determine components of the total surface energy balance.

Links

HFT manual

ISFS application note for processing soil sensor data.