Goulden, Michael (Mike): University Of California, Irvine (Project Lead)
Dennison, Philip (Phil): University of Utah (Co-Investigator)
Randerson, James (Jim): University Of California, Irvine (Co-Investigator)
Riley, William (Bill): Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Co-Investigator)
Roberts, Dar: UC Santa Barbara (Co-Investigator)
Trumbore, Susan: (Co-Investigator)
Jin, Yufang: University of California, Davis (Participant)
Project Funding:
2005 - 2008
NRA: 2004 NASA: Carbon Cycle Science
Funded by NASA
Abstract:
Our project focuses on better quantifying and understanding California's Carbon budget. We are addressing four issues.
(1) How much carbon is released and taken up by California? We are collecting field data (eddy covariance, biomass, ANPP, LAI, C-14), analyzing remote-sensing images (ETM+, MODIS), assembling existing data (fire history, land and energy use), developing mechanistic models (ISOLSM, CASA), and building and running a data analysis framework that will produce carbon budgets for California.
(2) How do our results compare with previous budgets? The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has created annual C budgets for the US since 1997 for reporting to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. These budgets overlap markedly with the NACP’s goals. We will compare our results for California with budgets that were created by the California Energy Commission (CEC) using the EPA protocol.
(3) How much, and why, does California’s carbon balance vary from year to year? We will use our budgets to quantify the year-to-year differences in California’s CO2 exchange. We will consider the importance of interannual precipitation variability, fire emission, recovery from disturbance (fire, logging, and disease), stand thickening with fire suppression, land-use change, and agriculture. We hypothesize that variability in climate and fire cause large year-to-year differences in CO2 exchange by California’s ecosystems.
(4) Where do California’s CO2 emissions go? We will use a tracer model to determine how California’s carbon exchanges affect the concentration of CO2 at larger scales. We will focus on better understanding the magnitude, composition, and flow direction of the carbon-enriched (or depleted) plumes of air originating from California’s cities and ecosystems. We will determine whether covariances between extreme events (e.g., fires) and circulation (e.g., strong offshore flow during Santa Ana winds) decouple some components of California’s carbon budget from the North American air mass.
More details may be found in the following project profile(s):
