Project Funding: 2010 - 2013

NRA: 2009 NASA: Terrestrial Ecology   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
We are conducting an analysis of the carbon fluxes and storage by synthesizing observations of weather, surface spectra, and high-resolution land-cover, and atmospheric CO2 with a suite of mechanistic models. The analysis will be performed globally, but many of the data products we propose to use are available only over the contiguous USA, so the quality of the estimation will be enhanced here and will contribute to NACP synthesis and integration. The synthesis of these data products will result in (1) global maps of time-varying sources and sinks of atmospheric CO2, wood biomass and soil carbon that are consistent with many kinds of observations; and (2) a self-consistent process- based model of these sources and sinks that can be extrapolated beyond this region of high data density. We have developed a robust data assimilation system (the Maximum Likelihood Ensemble Filter, MLEF) that can efficiently process very large volumes of data into a complex and nonlinear forward model. We have tested the system by assimilating weather and CO2 data into SiB-CASA, a global model of the interactions between ecosystems and the climate. The model has been updated to include carbon allocation, storage, and biogeochemical cycling through multiple ecosystem pools. Other recent improvements include explicit treatment of crops, high-resolution fossil fuel emissions estimates, and a prognostic phenology algorithm derived by assimilating 8 years of global MODIS data. The model simulates fluxes that result from both short-term (sub-diurnal physiology to seasonal phenology) and long-term (disturbance, succession, land management) processes, predicting carbon pools as well as hourly fluxes and high-frequency variations in atmospheric CO2. The model will be initialized using climatology and historical land-use data, then run in forward mode for the satellite era using disturbance maps derived from LandSat-derived disturbance products obtained from the North American Forest Dynamics project. Finally, we will perform ensemble data assimilation during the period of rich continuous CO2 data from NACP (2007-2012), including GOSAT/Ibuki data when they become available. We will GEOS-5 weather analyses on a 0.5° x 0.67° grid, NAFD disturbance data, GFED fire products, VULCAN fossil fuel emissions, and daily air-sea gas exchanges derived from the WHOI ocean model to predict vegetation and soil carbon pools, fluxes, and atmospheric CO2 on an hourly basis. Carbon pools will then be optimized by running ensemble assimilations of data from flux towers, atmospheric CO2 measurements. The final simulations will be made available through the NACP Modeling and Synthesis Thematic Data Center.

Publications:

Haynes, K. D., Baker, I. T., Denning, A. S., Stockli, R., Schaefer, K., Lokupitiya, E. Y., Haynes, J. M. 2019. Representing Grasslands Using Dynamic Prognostic Phenology Based on Biological Growth Stages: 1. Implementation in the Simple Biosphere Model (SiB4). Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. 11(12), 4423-4439. DOI: 10.1029/2018MS001540

Haynes, K. D., Baker, I. T., Denning, A. S., Wolf, S., Wohlfahrt, G., Kiely, G., Minaya, R. C., Haynes, J. M. 2019. Representing Grasslands Using Dynamic Prognostic Phenology Based on Biological Growth Stages: Part 2. Carbon Cycling. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. 11(12), 4440-4465. DOI: 10.1029/2018MS001541

Haynes, K., I. Baker, and S. Denning. 2020. Simple Biosphere Model version 4.2 (SiB4) technical description. Mountain Scholar, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA. https://hdl.handle.net/10217/200691

Fisher, J. B., Sikka, M., Oechel, W. C., Huntzinger, D. N., Melton, J. R., Koven, C. D., Ahlstrom, A., Arain, M. A., Baker, I., Chen, J. M., Ciais, P., Davidson, C., Dietze, M., El-Masri, B., Hayes, D., Huntingford, C., Jain, A. K., Levy, P. E., Lomas, M. R., Poulter, B., Price, D., Sahoo, A. K., Schaefer, K., Tian, H., Tomelleri, E., Verbeeck, H., Viovy, N., Wania, R., Zeng, N., Miller, C. E. 2014. Carbon cycle uncertainty in the Alaskan Arctic. Biogeosciences. 11(15), 4271-4288. DOI: 10.5194/bg-11-4271-2014

Matheny, A. M., Bohrer, G., Stoy, P. C., Baker, I. T., Black, A. T., Desai, A. R., Dietze, M. C., Gough, C. M., Ivanov, V. Y., Jassal, R. S., Novick, K. A., Schafer, K. V. R., Verbeeck, H. 2014. Characterizing the diurnal patterns of errors in the prediction of evapotranspiration by several land-surface models: An NACP analysis. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. 119(7), 1458-1473. DOI: 10.1002/2014JG002623

Stoy, P. C., Dietze, M. C., Richardson, A. D., Vargas, R., Barr, A. G., Anderson, R. S., Arain, M. A., Baker, I. T., Black, T. A., Chen, J. M., Cook, R. B., Gough, C. M., Grant, R. F., Hollinger, D. Y., Izaurralde, R. C., Kucharik, C. J., Lafleur, P., Law, B. E., Liu, S., Lokupitiya, E., Luo, Y., Munger, J. W., Peng, C., Poulter, B., Price, D. T., Ricciuto, D. M., Riley, W. J., Sahoo, A. K., Schaefer, K., Schwalm, C. R., Tian, H., Verbeeck, H., Weng, E. 2013. Evaluating the agreement between measurements and models of net ecosystem exchange at different times and timescales using wavelet coherence: an example using data from the North American Carbon Program Site-Level Interim Synthesis. Biogeosciences. 10(11), 6893-6909. DOI: 10.5194/bg-10-6893-2013

Huntzinger, D. N., Post, W. M., Wei, Y., Michalak, A. M., West, T. O., Jacobson, A. R., Baker, I. T., Chen, J. M., Davis, K. J., Hayes, D. J., Hoffman, F. M., Jain, A. K., Liu, S., McGuire, A. D., Neilson, R. P., Potter, C., Poulter, B., Price, D., Raczka, B. M., Tian, H. Q., Thornton, P., Tomelleri, E., Viovy, N., Xiao, J., Yuan, W., Zeng, N., Zhao, M., Cook, R. 2012. North American Carbon Program (NACP) regional interim synthesis: Terrestrial biospheric model intercomparison. Ecological Modelling. 232, 144-157. DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2012.02.004

Keenan, T. F., Baker, I., Barr, A., Ciais, P., Davis, K., Dietze, M., Dragoni, D., Gough, C. M., Grant, R., Hollinger, D., Hufkens, K., Poulter, B., McCaughey, H., Raczka, B., Ryu, Y., Schaefer, K., Tian, H., Verbeeck, H., Zhao, M., Richardson, A. D. 2012. Terrestrial biosphere model performance for inter-annual variability of land-atmosphere CO2 exchange. Global Change Biology. 18(6), 1971-1987. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2012.02678.x

Sulman, B. N., Desai, A. R., Schroeder, N. M., Ricciuto, D., Barr, A., Richardson, A. D., Flanagan, L. B., Lafleur, P. M., Tian, H., Chen, G., Grant, R. F., Poulter, B., Verbeeck, H., Ciais, P., Ringeval, B., Baker, I. T., Schaefer, K., Luo, Y., Weng, E. 2012. Impact of hydrological variations on modeling of peatland CO2 fluxes: Results from the North American Carbon Program site synthesis. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. 117(G1). DOI: 10.1029/2011JG001862

Dietze, M. C., Vargas, R., Richardson, A. D., Stoy, P. C., Barr, A. G., Anderson, R. S., Arain, M. A., Baker, I. T., Black, T. A., Chen, J. M., Ciais, P., Flanagan, L. B., Gough, C. M., Grant, R. F., Hollinger, D., Izaurralde, R. C., Kucharik, C. J., Lafleur, P., Liu, S., Lokupitiya, E., Luo, Y., Munger, J. W., Peng, C., Poulter, B., Price, D. T., Ricciuto, D. M., Riley, W. J., Sahoo, A. K., Schaefer, K., Suyker, A. E., Tian, H., Tonitto, C., Verbeeck, H., Verma, S. B., Wang, W., Weng, E. 2011. Characterizing the performance of ecosystem models across time scales: A spectral analysis of the North American Carbon Program site-level synthesis. Journal of Geophysical Research. 116(G4). DOI: 10.1029/2011JG001661

Schuh, A. E., Denning, A. S., Corbin, K. D., Baker, I. T., Uliasz, M., Parazoo, N., Andrews, A. E., Worthy, D. E. J. 2010. A regional high-resolution carbon flux inversion of North America for 2004. Biogeosciences. 7(5), 1625-1644. DOI: 10.5194/bg-7-1625-2010

Lauvaux, T., Schuh, A. E., Uliasz, M., Richardson, S., Miles, N., Andrews, A. E., Sweeney, C., Diaz, L. I., Martins, D., Shepson, P. B., Davis, K. J. 2012. Constraining the CO<sub>2</sub> budget of the corn belt: exploring uncertainties from the assumptions in a mesoscale inverse system. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 12(1), 337-354. DOI: 10.5194/acp-12-337-2012

Lauvaux, T., Schuh, A. E., Bocquet, M., Wu, L., Richardson, S., Miles, N., Davis, K. J. 2012. Network design for mesoscale inversions of CO2 sources and sinks. Tellus B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology. 64(1), 17980. DOI: 10.3402/tellusb.v64i0.17980

Miles, N. L., Richardson, S. J., Davis, K. J., Lauvaux, T., Andrews, A. E., West, T. O., Bandaru, V., Crosson, E. R. 2012. Large amplitude spatial and temporal gradients in atmospheric boundary layer CO2mole fractions detected with a tower-based network in the U.S. upper Midwest. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. 117(G1). DOI: 10.1029/2011JG001781

Schuh, A. E., Lauvaux, T., West, T. O., Denning, A. S., Davis, K. J., Miles, N., Richardson, S., Uliasz, M., Lokupitiya, E., Cooley, D., Andrews, A., Ogle, S. 2013. Evaluating atmospheric CO2inversions at multiple scales over a highly inventoried agricultural landscape. Global Change Biology. 19(5), 1424-1439. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12141

Baker, I., Denning, S., Stockli, R. 2017. North American gross primary productivity: regional characterization and interannual variability. Tellus B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology. 62(5), 533-549. DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0889.2010.00492.x

Butler, M. P., Davis, K. J., Denning, A. S., Kawa, S. R. 2017. Using continental observations in global atmospheric inversions of CO2: North American carbon sources and sinks. Tellus B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology. 62(5), 550-572. DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0889.2010.00501.x

Corbin, K. D., Denning, A. S., Lokupitiya, E. Y., Schuh, A. E., Miles, N. L., Davis, K. J., Richardson, S., Baker, I. T. 2017. Assessing the impact of crops on regional CO2 fluxes and atmospheric concentrations. Tellus B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology. 62(5), 521-532. DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0889.2010.00485.x

Schuh, A. E., Denning, A. S., Uliasz, M., Corbin, K. D. 2009. Seeing the forest through the trees: Recovering large-scale carbon flux biases in the midst of small-scale variability. Journal of Geophysical Research. 114(G3). DOI: 10.1029/2008JG000842

2013 NASA Terrestrial Ecology Science Team Meeting Poster(s)

• Analysis of Carbon Stocks and Fluxes by Assimilation of Multiple Satellite Data Products   --   (Scott Denning, Katherine Haynes, Andrew Schuh, Ian Baker, Rebecca McKeown)   [abstract]   [poster]

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]

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

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