Abstract. Within the project EUropean Studies on Trace gases and Atmospheric CHemistry as a contribution to Large-scale Biosphere-atmosphere experiment in Amazonia (LBA-EUSTACH), we performed tower-based eddy covariance measurements of O₃ flux above an Amazonian primary rain forest at the end of the wet and dry season. Ozone deposition revealed distinct seasonal differences in the magnitude and diel variation. In the wet season, the rain forest was an effective O₃ sink with a mean daytime (midday) maximum deposition velocity of 2.3 cm s⁻¹, and a corresponding O₃ flux of −11 nmol m⁻² s⁻¹. At the end of the dry season, the ozone mixing ratio was about four times higher (up to maximum values of 80 ppb) than in the wet season, as a consequence of strong regional biomass burning activity. However, the typical maximum daytime deposition flux was very similar to the wet season. This results from a strong limitation of daytime O₃ deposition due to reduced plant stomatal aperture as a response to large values of the specific humidity deficit. As a result, the average midday deposition velocity in the dry burning season was only 0.5 cm s⁻¹. The large diel ozone variation caused large canopy storage effects that masked the true diel variation of ozone deposition mechanisms in the measured eddy covariance flux, and for which corrections had to be made. In general, stomatal aperture was sufficient to explain the largest part of daytime ozone deposition. However, during nighttime, chemical reaction with nitrogen monoxide (NO) was found to contribute substantially to the O₃ sink in the rain forest canopy. Further contributions were from non-stomatal plant uptake and other processes that could not be clearly identified.

Measurements, made simultaneously on a 22 years old cattle pasture enabled the spatially and temporally direct comparison of O₃ dry deposition values from this site with typical vegetation cover of deforested land in southwest Amazonia to the results from the primary rain forest. The mean ozone deposition to the pasture was found to be systematically lower than that to the forest by 30% in the wet and 18% in the dry season.