Consequences of introducing bryophytes and Arctic-shrubs in a land surface model with dynamical vegetation.
Abstract
Recent developments of boreal vegetation in land surface models show the importance of new plant functional types for a better representation of physical and carbon cycle related processes in northern latitudes. In past climate transitions, shifts in northern vegetation played a crucial role, for example in the inception of the Last Glacial Maximum. With the current high-latitude warming, a greening of vegetation is observed, associated with increased shrub cover. It has thus become essential to include shifts in vegetation in models. In the ORCHIDEE land surface model with a dynamic vegetation, we introduced new parameterizations and processes associated to Arctic-shrubs, bryophytes (mosses and lichens) and boreal C3 grasses to simulate their effect on biomass, albedo, snow cover and soil thermal dynamic (including frozen soils). Specific competition and survival conditions are defined for these three plant functional types. Competition between herbaceous vegetation, shrubs and trees is based on available light. Survival conditions of shrubs include their protection from cold temperatures by snow, and the competition between C3 grasses and bryophytes depends especially on soil water-saturation conditions. The equilibrium fractional coverage of the three competing plant functional types is based on the net primary production. We compare the results from simulations with different configurations: 1) vegetation being either fixed prescribed from a satellite land cover map or dynamic and 2) plant functional types used being either the default settings of ORCHIDEE which include three different boreal tree types and one grassland type, or the latter plus the new boreal vegetation types. The simulations are run for the historical period and with an additional run of 100 years according to the RCP 4.5 and 8.5 climate scenarios. We evaluate the effect of new plant functional types on the vegetation distribution, and their consequences for energy, water and carbon fluxes. Climate feedbacks expected by coupling ORCHIDEE with a GCM will be discussed.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFM.C22B..06D
- Keywords:
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- 3337 Global climate models;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 0736 Snow;
- CRYOSPHEREDE: 0798 Modeling;
- CRYOSPHEREDE: 1823 Frozen ground;
- HYDROLOGY