The BOREAS Information System

TE-14: Estimating Regional Biosphere-Atmosphere Exchange of Carbon Dioxide and Water in Boreal Forests with Ecosystem Models

P.I.(s): Gordon B. Bonan -- National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

Objectives: Models provide a means to extrapolate processes to large spatial and long temporal scales. I will conduct simulation analyses with coupled ecosystem and land surface process model to:

1. identify key physiological processes and ecological variables needed for a general predictive model of biosphere CO₂ and water fluxes
2. quantify errors produced by parameter uncertainty
3. derive seasonal and annual CO₂ and water budgets for several BOREAS tower sites and the two regional sites

Global extrapolation will proceed by coupling the land surface process model to the NCAR Community Climate Model. Regional estimates of CO₂, water, and energy exchange obtained from the off-line modeling will be used to test the representation of sub-grid scale land surface heterogeneity for the land surface process model.
The major deliverables to BOREAS are seasonal and annual CO₂ and water budgets for individual tower sites and the two regional sites. This will require from other groups ground truth data for particular forest types to initialize and validate the models. It will also require from the BOREAS Project Staff meteorological data to force the models (30 minute resolution, collected for one full year); and maps of ecosystem and soil cover for the southern and northern sites.

TE-14 Data Sets