Intercomparison of the AmeriFlux In Situ Measurements Across Multiple Biomes as an Alternative to Climatic Classification
Abstract
Over the past century, several types of climate classifications were developed, for example, International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) classification of biomes, Köppen's scheme of classification of World climates, the Holdridge life zones system, Whittaker's biome-type classification scheme, Trewartha's climate classification scheme, Thornthwaite Aridity Index. These classifications are mainly based on easily measured long-term average climate variables, such as temperature and precipitation. The goal of this presentation is to describe the potential for an alternate climatic classification, based on bioclimatic and ecosystem parameters, such as sensible heat flux, latent heat flux, radiation, atmospheric and soil temperature, vapor pressure deficit, soil water content, as well as Gross Ecosystem Production (GPP) and Net Ecosystem Exchange (NEE). We performed analyses including the Principal Component Analysis, singular value decomposition, k-means cluster analysis and hierarchical analysis, using the measurements from 79 AmeriFlux eddy covariance sites across the USA. These analyses were used to determine the frequencies of occurrence of sites in different climatic conditions and the parameters that are the best predictors of the GPP and NEE. We also assessed the temperature and precipitation relationships for different climates and biomes, and determined that temperature and precipitation alone are poor descriptors of climate. For example, the amount of precipitation does not indicate whether a climate is moist or dry, and temperature does not really reveal the energy that is available for plant growth. For the AmeriFlux sites, we also performed an intra-annual comparison of the environmental variables. The agglomerative non-hierarchical and hierarchical clustering techniques are used as a potential alternative to climatic zones classification. This research was supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research of the U.S. Department of Energy Terrestrial Ecosystem Science Program and used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), also supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUFM.B21C0499F
- Keywords:
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- 0416 BIOGEOSCIENCES Biogeophysics;
- 0428 BIOGEOSCIENCES Carbon cycling;
- 0439 BIOGEOSCIENCES Ecosystems;
- structure and dynamics;
- 0429 BIOGEOSCIENCES Climate dynamics