Representing sediment transport in earth system model

Abstract:

In most of the earth system models, lateral leaching of nutrients has been primarily focusing on the dissolved form via surface and subsurface runoff. The lateral leaching of particulate nutrients, however, is missing due the lack of plausible soil erosion and sediment transportation processes. This study aims to fill this missing gap by developing a physically based soil erosion and suspended sediment transport module on top of Model for Scale Adaptive River Transport (MOSART), which has been coupled with the Community Land Model (CLM). The conceptual design of the MOSART-sediment module will be introduced, followed by the analysis of some preliminary simulation results of riverine sediment at the global scale. Then the lateral leaching of particulate nitrogen will be added on top of MOSART-sediment, and its potential impacts on the overall nitrogen balance will be investigated in the earth system modeling context. Sensitivity analysis will be conducted to shed light on the parameterization strategy. Finally current limitations and future directions will be discussed.