A prominent daily maximum has been documented in the early to mid-morning hours for the mixing ratios of nitrogen oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in and right above the forest canopy including the PROPHET forest site. This temporal pattern currently is not properly reproduced by models. This shortcoming implies that processes influencing oxidation chemistry linked to oxidized nitrogen cycling are lacking or not properly represented in model descriptions. Consideration of bi-directional nitrogen oxides (NOx) leaf-level exchange based on the concept of a compensation point has shown the potential to yield better representation of the morning NOx peak. We hypothesize that accounting for the bi-directional exchange of NOx in the forest canopy will improve models to represent the diurnal and vertical scales of radical and oxidation chemistry in the PROPHET forest atmosphere. Our proposed research will be a contribution to the experiment “PROPHET 2016: Towards a better understanding of radical chemistry in a forested environment”, which is a concerted effort to close a number of crucial gaps in understanding forest atmospheric oxidation chemistry