From a domestic perspective, understanding the US carbon budget is a foundation requirement for sound planning and ecosystem management. A four year project has just begun that will concentrate on the conterminous US. The project will be in three parts:
- The implementation of a new framework to analyze processes controlling net carbon exchange based on recent advances of ecosystem models, process studies, and analytical technologies. We will develop a modular framework linking disturbance and management to life form distribution and biogeochemistry, in order to provide a comprehensive way to examine and estimate terrestrial net carbon exchanges.
- The development of the data sets needed to operate the model. These will include soils, meteorology, and land use histories.
- The analysis of the US carbon
budget. Model systems will be compared against "traditional" in situ observations
such as NPP soil/carbon biomass data. The continental model will be integrated
and compared to the simulated patterns of atmospheric CO2.
NSF
Carbon Model