Simulating drought impacts on energy and water balance in an Amazonian rainforest
Abstract
The studies of the interaction between vegetation and climate change in the Amazon Basin indicate that up to half of the region's forests may be displaced by savanna vegetation by the end of the century. Additional analyses suggest that complex interactions among land use, fire-frequency, and episodic drought are driving an even more rapid process of the forest impoverishment and displacement referred here as "savannization". But it is not clear whether surface/ecosystem models are suitable to analyze extreme events like a drought. A long-term observation of energy and water in throughfall exclusion experiments has provided unique insights into the energy and water dynamics of Amazonian rainforests during drought conditions. In this study, we will evaluate how well the six surface/ecosystem models (CLM-DGVM, ED 2.0, IBIS, JULES, SiB and SPA) quantify the energy and water dynamics from two Amazonian throughfall exclusion experiments. All models were run for the Tapajós and Caixuana sites with one baseline year using normal precipitation (i.e. do not impose a drought) and then the drought manipulation was imposed for several drought levels (10 to 90% rainfall exclusion). The sap flow, soil moisture, sensible and latent heat flux will be used to analyze if the models are able to capture dynamics of stress and what the implications for the energy and water dynamics are. We find that models are sensible to drought effects when they simulate the energy fluxes (sensible and latent heat), but the water dynamic is not well capture by the models.
- Publication:
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AGU Spring Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- May 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUSM.A41B..03I
- Keywords:
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- 3322 ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES / Land/atmosphere interactions;
- 0426 BIOGEOSCIENCES / Biosphere/atmosphere interactions;
- 0495 BIOGEOSCIENCES / Water/energy interactions;
- 1812 HYDROLOGY / Drought