Assessing NEE and Carbon Dynamics Among European Forestecosystems: Development and Validation of a New Phenology and Soil Carbon Routines within the Process Oriented 3D-Cmcc-Forest-Ecosystem Model

Abstract:

The two main processes involved in forest ecosystems carbon balance are photosynthesis and respiration. Ecosystem respiration is determined by heterotrophic and autotrophic respiration, the former driven by microbial decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM), the latter by growth and maintenance of plant tissues. Thus it is extremely important to reliably quantify ecosystem respiration in order to estimate the global carbon budget of a forest ecosystem, namely the Net Ecosystem Exchange (NEE). For the very same reason we have improved the 6.1 version of the 3D-CMCC-Forest Ecosystem Model (3D-CMCC-FEM) with both a multilayer soil Carbon dynamics routine and several modifications in phenology and littering. Bud burst phenology has been improved with a new “Nonstructural Carbon injection function” representing the quantity of Carbon destined to new leaves and fineroots growth; fall phenology has been improved with a novel physical driven logistic function to simulate leaf falling. Soil carbon dynamics throughout the Residues, Microbial and Humads pools follow a zero order kinetics equation, representing microbial decomposition activity. The sum of CO2 oxidized at each decomposition step form Heterotrophic respiration.
The present work focuses on the presentation of the 6.1 version of the 3D-CMCC-FEM and its validation against six FLUXNET sites representing a transect throughout the main European forest Ecosystems. The validation on about 10 years of simulation involved NEE, GPP and Reco:
 - Seasonal trends;
 - Daily, monthly and annual fluxes;
 - Interannual anomalies (annual and MJJ).