Modeling Carbon Cycles for the Western United States using NASA Satellite Products: Focus on Climate and Land Use Change Impacts
Abstract
Satellite remote sensing and vegetation-soil predictions from the NASA-CASA model were used in this study to estimate the past and future carbon balance for ecosystems in the western United States. We report on spatially detailed (< 10 km resolution) terrestrial carbon budgets for ecosystems of the Rocky Mountain and Pacific regions of the county. Although net primary production (NPP) was estimated to increase on a western region-wide basis during the 1990s, the total terrestrial sink in all western U.S. ecosystems did not exceed 0.01 Pg C per year between 1982 and 1997 and continues to recover slowly from drought impacts up to 2006. Forested mountain areas of the Cascades, the Sierra Nevada Range, the northern California Coast Range, and the southern Rockies were estimated as the most consistent ecosystem carbon sinks areas within the region. Future climate scenarios imply that major ecosystem carbon losses in the western United States will be experienced in all but the most isolated forest areas of the high mountain zones.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2007
- Bibcode:
- 2007AGUFM.B42C..04P
- Keywords:
-
- 0418 Bioremediation;
- 0426 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions (0315);
- 0428 Carbon cycling (4806);
- 0429 Climate dynamics (1620)