Project Funding: 2008 - 2011

NRA: 2007 NASA: Carbon Cycle Science   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
Africa has a large and growing role in the global carbon cycle, with important climate change implications. However, sparse observations in and around Africa makes it one of the weakest links in our understanding. Recent work by this team suggests Africa has a near zero decade-scale carbon balance, but that climate fluctuations induce sizeable variability in ecosystem productivity and savanna fires, greatly enhancing the inter-annual variability in global atmospheric [CO2]. With increasing populations and economic development Africa is poised for agricultural intensification and conversion to cropland and managed rangeland this century. Furthermore, complex interactions among climate change and ecosystem processes (primary production, tree-grass interactions, grazers, browsers, fire and nitrogen) challenge our ability to predict future carbon stocks in Africa and other tropical regions. Perhaps more important, future provision of vital ecosystem services to Africa’s people remains difficult to predict. We propose an integrated approach to modeling carbon dynamics that builds on our understanding of African ecology and assimilates data from field measurements, remote sensing and atmospheric measurements. Our modeling system will be unique in allowing dynamic simulation of major disturbance factors for prediction of ecosystem processes and vegetation structure, or their proscription using measurements from field data and remote sensing. This data assimilation and diagnosis process will be used to optimize model parameters and validate simulations using data on vegetation structure, productivity and fire frequency. We will validate regional simulations via atmospheric inversions using calibrated [CO2] and 13C measurements. The integrated modeling system will provide a tool for carbon cycle diagnosis in tropical systems using remotely sensed and other datasets. However, the modeling system in prognostic mode will provide dynamic simulation of climate change and disturbance impacts and enable prediction of ecosystem dynamics, long-term carbon balance, and future productivity and sustainability in Africa’s crucial grassland, savanna and forest ecosystems.

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

• Measurement and Modeling of Carbon and Woody Resource Responses to Climate and Disturbance in Continental Africa   --   (Niall P Hanan, Lara Prihodko, Rebecca McKeown, Gabriela Bucini, Andrew Tredennick)   [abstract]

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

• NASA Terrestrial Ecology (TE) Project Profile