Including sugar cane in the agro-ecosystem model ORCHIDEE-STICS: calibration and validation
Abstract
Sugarcane is currently the most efficient bioenergy crop with regards to the energy produced per hectare. With approximately half the global bioethanol production in 2005, and a devoted land area expected to expand globally in the years to come, sugar cane is at the heart of the biofuel debate. Dynamic global vegetation models coupled with agronomical models are powerful and novel tools to tackle many of the environmental issues related to biofuels if they are carefully calibrated and validated against field observations. Here we adapt the agro-terrestrial model ORCHIDEE-STICS for sugar cane simulations. Observation data of LAI are used to evaluate the sensitivity of the model to parameters of nitrogen absorption and phenology, which are calibrated in a systematic way for six sites in Australia and La Reunion. We find that the optimal set of parameters is highly dependent on the sites' characteristics and that the model can reproduce satisfactorily the evolution of LAI. This careful calibration of ORCHIDEE-STICS for sugar cane biomass production for different locations and technical itineraries provides a strong basis for further analysis of the impacts of bioenergy-related land use change on carbon cycle budgets. As a next step, a sensitivity analysis is carried out to estimate the uncertainty of the model in biomass and carbon flux simulation due to its parameterization.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011AGUFM.B43F0367V
- Keywords:
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- 0402 BIOGEOSCIENCES / Agricultural systems;
- 0426 BIOGEOSCIENCES / Biosphere/atmosphere interactions;
- 0466 BIOGEOSCIENCES / Modeling