Project Funding: 2009 - 2012

NRA: 2008 NASA: Terrestrial Ecology   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
The importance of the land-surface dynamics of the Amazon region to the global and regional climates, including water, heat and carbon exchanges between land and atmosphere, motivates this proposal, which will use a new integrated dataset of meteorology and carbon and water fluxes across sites in Amazon (a legacy of NASA's LBA-ECO project) to drive and evaluate the performance of land surface models. Specifically, we propose to use the network of meteorological and climate data (sunlight, radiation, precipitation) from Amazon sites to drive ecosystem models that simulate energy, water and CO2 fluxes over the Amazon, and then compare the model mechanisms to each other and relevant observations of ecosystem fluxes. . We therefore propose to compare ecosystem models that simulate terrestrial energy, water and CO2 fluxes with continuous observations of these quantities over the Amazonia area to provide understanding on how well these models quantify the land surface process and to assess deficiencies in the models and how they could be improved. Specifically this project will take advantage of the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA) dynamically updated database. The investigators are currently part of the coordination team and participating in the LBA Model Intercomparison Project phase I (LBA¬MIP I) as part of the NASA’s LBA phase 3 (Synthesis and Analysis), which uses data from several flux towers across a gradient of ecosystems within Amazon. This proposal is directly relevant to the Subelement 4: Syntheses, Integration, and Impact Studies and the following Objectives: (1) "to offer opportunities for successor proposals and follow-on research from past NASA Terrestrial Ecology research projects"; (2) "to seek studies to compile and/or develop new data products that would enable new synthesis and integration research" and (3) "to encourage analyses of ecosystem and biogeochemical cycling impacts that could inform future integrated assessments".

2010 NASA Terrestrial Ecology Science Team Meeting Poster(s)

• What controls water and carbon fluxes for ecosystem land surface models and flux observations in Amazonia? Results from the LBA‐DMIP   --   (Bradley Christoffersen, Alessandro Araujo, Ian Baker, Marcos H Costa, Luis Gustavo G Goncalves, Hewlley Imbuziero Imbuziero, Bart Kruijt, Antonio Manzi, Ben Poulter, Celso von Randow, Natalia Restrepo‐Coupe, Humberto da Rocha, Scott R Saleska, Dirceu L Herdies, Michel N Muza)   [abstract]
• LBA-Model Intercomparison Project: Scientific Issues and Initial Results   --   (Michel Nobre Muza, Luis Gustavo G. de Goncalves, Natalia Restrepo-Coupe, Scott Saleska, Rafael Rosolem, Xubin Zeng, Naomi Marcil Levine)   [abstract]   [poster]

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

• NASA Terrestrial Ecology (TE) Project Profile