Project Funding: 2010 - 2013

NRA: 2005 NASA: North American Carbon Program   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
We propose to estimate carbon fluxes from the North American continent taking into account 30 years of climate and disturbance history. Our approach is to utilize the forest age and biomass results based on time series Landsat and FIA data developed by a currently funded NASA Carbon Cycle Science Project (North American Forest Disturbance and Regrowth Since 1972, PI: S. N. Goward). Dense time series data for a number of forested scenes (>25) in the US and Canada will be used to initialize and calibrate a biogeochemical model that predicts gross and net carbon fluxes. Model testing will include appropriate Ameriflux, LTER, NACP Tier 2, and FIA data. Climate variability (temperature, precipitation, solar radiation) will also be included in the analysis. Then using less temporally dense satellite data but wall to wall continental coverage, the modeling will predict gross and net carbon fluxes resulting from disturbance history and climate for the forests of North America. The products of this study will be used by our collaborators as boundary conditions for atmospheric transport (forward and inversion) models. By reconciling top-down (atmosphere) and bottom-up (biogeochemistry) analyses of the net fluxes we will be able to estimate accuracy and uncertainty in our model results.

Publications:

Goward, S. N., Masek, J. G., Cohen, W., Moisen, G., Collatz, G. J., Healey, S., Houghton, R. A., Huang, C., Kennedy, R., Law, B., Powell, S., Turner, D., Wulder, M. A. 2008. Forest Disturbance and North American Carbon Flux. Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union. 89(11), 105. DOI: 10.1029/2008EO110001

Masek, J. G., Collatz, G. J. 2006. Estimating forest carbon fluxes in a disturbed southeastern landscape: Integration of remote sensing, forest inventory, and biogeochemical modeling. Journal of Geophysical Research. 111(G1). DOI: 10.1029/2005JG000062

Williams, C. A., Collatz, G. J., Masek, J., Goward, S. N. 2012. Carbon consequences of forest disturbance and recovery across the conterminous United States. Global Biogeochemical Cycles. 26(1). DOI: 10.1029/2010GB003947

Ghimire, B., Williams, C. A., Collatz, G. J., Vanderhoof, M. 2012. Fire-induced carbon emissions and regrowth uptake in western U.S. forests: Documenting variation across forest types, fire severity, and climate regions. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. 117(G3). DOI: 10.1029/2011JG001935

Morton, D. C., Collatz, G. J., Wang, D., Randerson, J. T., Giglio, L., Chen, Y. 2013. Satellite-based assessment of climate controls on US burned area. Biogeosciences. 10(1), 247-260. DOI: 10.5194/bg-10-247-2013

2011 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Poster(s)

• Combining Ecological and Atmospheric Observations to Understand Carbon Budgets Using Models with MODIS, LANDSAT, and GOSAT data.   --   (Scott Denning, Nick Parazoo, Katherine Corbin, Baker Ian, Rebecca McKeown, George James Collatz, Stephan Randolph Kawa)   [abstract]
• Analysis of the relationship between climate and NDVI variability at global scales   --   (Fanwei Zeng, Jim Collatz, Jorge Pinzon, Alvaro Ivanoff)   [abstract]   [poster]

2010 NASA Terrestrial Ecology Science Team Meeting Poster(s)

• Pulsed Airborne Lidar measurements of Atmospheric CO2 Column Absorption and Line Shapes from 3-13 km altitudes   --   (James B Abshire, Haris Riris, Graham R. Allan, Clark Weaver, Jianping Mao, Xiaoli Sun, Axel Amediek)   [abstract]   [poster]

2008 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Posters

• Impacts of disturbance history on carbon fluxes from US forests: Application of satellite and inventory data to inform biogeochemical modeling   --   (Christopher A. Williams, G. James Collatz, Jeffrey G. Masek)   [abstract]   [poster]

More details may be found in the following project profile(s):

• NASA Terrestrial Ecology (TE) Project Profile
• North American Carbon Program (NACP) Project Profile