Identification

Title

Modeling vegetation and land use in models of the earth system

Abstract

Land surface modeling was invented to represent the atmosphere's lower boundary over continental areas in climate models. Mass, momentum, and energy cross this boundary via biogeochemical and biogeophysical processes often involving plants. Scientific research with models and in the field strives to refine how the changing face of the land interacts with climate change. Discussed here are methods by which we simulate the vegetation and land use in global models and ways by which vegetation and land use affect climate. Model simulations suggest that global land cover changes due to land use play a greater role in affecting 20th and 21st-century climate than changes in unmanaged vegetation. Among the biogeochemical and biogeophysical effects of land use, biogeochemical ones seem to dominate and enhance 20th- and 21st- century warming. Among the effects of natural vegetation, the positive biogeophysical snow-vegetation-albedo feedback of the high latitudes is expected to increasingly influence global climate in response to increasing vegetation density. Still, human or natural disturbances and other not well-understood processes may alter expected outcomes. Interactive nitrogen is one of the newer additions to our models. Nitrogen is found to buffer the terrestrial biosphere's response to forcings, such as changing CO₂ or climate. We still have much to learn about nitrogen's role in the Earth System. Yet, if land use dominates the effects of land cover change on climate, then human behavior will be our greatest uncertainty, which includes management choices that are not easy to predict, such as urbanization, deforestation and afforestation, crop expansion or abandonment, as well as crop rotation, irrigation, and fertilization.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d76q1ztz

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2010-09-29T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

This is a preprint of an article published in Levis Samuel. Modeling vegetation and land use in models of the Earth System. WIREs Clim Change 2010, 1: 840-856. doi: 10.1002/wcc.83

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact