B14A-02:
Global scale analysis and evaluation of an improved mechanistic representation of plant nitrogen and carbon dynamics in the Community Land Model (CLM)

Monday, 15 December 2014: 4:15 PM
Bardan Ghimire1, William J Riley2, Charles D Koven1, James Tremper Randerson3, Mingquan Mu4, Jens Kattge5, Alistair Rogers6 and Peter B. Reich7, (1)Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, United States, (2)Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab, Berkeley, CA, United States, (3)University of California Irvine, Department of Earth System Science, Irvine, CA, United States, (4)University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States, (5)Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany, (6)Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, United States, (7)University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Department of Forest Resources, Minneapolis, MN, United States
Abstract:
In many ecosystems, nitrogen is the most limiting nutrient for plant growth and productivity. However mechanistic representation of nitrogen uptake linked to root traits, and functional nitrogen allocation among different leaf enzymes involved in respiration and photosynthesis is currently lacking in Earth System models.

The linkage between nitrogen availability and plant productivity is simplistically represented by potential photosynthesis rates, and is subsequently downregulated depending on nitrogen supply and other nitrogen consumers in the model (e.g., nitrification). This type of potential photosynthesis rate calculation is problematic for several reasons. Firstly, plants do not photosynthesize at potential rates and then downregulate. Secondly, there is considerable subjectivity on the meaning of potential photosynthesis rates. Thirdly, there exists lack of understanding on modeling these potential photosynthesis rates in a changing climate. In addition to model structural issues in representing photosynthesis rates, the role of plant roots in nutrient acquisition have been largely ignored in Earth System models. For example, in CLM4.5, nitrogen uptake is linked to leaf level processes (e.g., primarily productivity) rather than root scale process involved in nitrogen uptake.

We present a new plant model for CLM with an improved mechanistic presentation of plant nitrogen uptake based on root scale Michaelis Menten kinetics, and stronger linkages between leaf nitrogen and plant productivity by inferring relationships observed in global databases of plant traits (including the TRY database and several individual studies). We also incorporate improved representation of plant nitrogen leaf allocation, especially in tropical regions where significant over-prediction of plant growth and productivity in CLM4.5 simulations exist. We evaluate our improved global model simulations using the International Land Model Benchmarking (ILAMB) framework. We conclude that mechanistic representation of leaf-level nitrogen allocation and a theoretically consistent treatment of competition with belowground consumers leads to overall improvements in CLM4.5’s global carbon cycling predictions.

Back to: New Mechanisms, Feedbacks, and Approaches for Improving Predictions of the Global Carbon Cycle in Earth System Models I
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