Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

Science Rendezvous > 2009 Posters
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Evaluation of a Diagnostic Carbon Flux Model with Observations at Eddy Covariance Flux Towers

David Turner, David Ritts, Sonia Wharton, Dean Vickers, Russ Monson, Joanne Nightingale

Observations of carbon dioxide fluxes at eddy covariance flux towers offer the opportunity for calibration and validation of carbon flux models used for making regional estimates of the terrestrial carbon balance. For this study we assembled 3 years of daily flux data from 6 tower sites varying widely in their climate and vegetation physiognomy. The data were used to evaluate the CFLUX model, which is the biosphere flux model component of a model-data fusion approach to regional scaling of Net Ecosystem Production (NEP). Simulated and measured gross primary production, ecosystem respiration, and NEP showed generally good agreement across sites and for interannual variation within a site. The seasonal trend on soil moisture availability was a particularly important control on carbon fluxes at the grassland sites. We are currently assembling the inputs to run CLFUX at the 1 km spatial resolution and daily time step over California, Oregon and Washington. Results will be evaluated in relation to spatial and temporal patterns in observations of atmospheric CO2 concentration.