This article presents a new parameterization of the global vegetation organizing carbon and hydrology in dynamic ecosystems (ORCHIDEE) model, modifying the assimilation, allocation, and phenology processes for a steppe ecosystem. It aims 1) to improve the modeled growth primary production (GPP) based on both in situ CO2 flux measurements and remote-sensing data of the fraction of absorbed photosynthetic radiation, and 2) to evaluate how GPP improvement results in better-modeled fluxes for ecosystem respiration, net ecosystem exchange, and latent heat. This new parameterization leads to a realistic annual GPP (comparable to the data within 10%), and a realistic seasonal variability of GPP (R2 = 0.80). Further, we found that improving GPP into ORCHIDEE immediately brings ecosystem respiration and net ecosystem exchange fluxes into better agreement with the eddy-covariance data, both on seasonal but also on interannual time scales. This result suggests that the response of this steppe ecosystem to interannual climate variations can be well reproduced from the response to seasonal variation, and that biotic effects are not interannual. This indicates the potential ability to reproduce climate-induced changes in the carbon balance of steppes with the use of a generic process-oriented vegetation model such as ORCHIDEE. The Rangeland Ecology & Management archives are made available by the Society for Range Management and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact lbry-journals@email.arizona.edu for further information. Migrated from OJS platform August 2020
Scholarly peer-reviewed articles published by the Society for Range Management. Access articles on a rolling-window basis from vol. 1, 1948 up to 5 years from the current year. Formerly Journal of Range Management (JRM). More recent content is available by subscription from SRM.