B019-0014
Incorporating functional diversity into the Energy Land Model (ELM) substantially influences terrestrial carbon uptake

Tuesday, 8 December 2020
Poster
Ethan E Butler1, Kirk R Wythers1, Habacuc Flores-Moreno2, Daniel M Ricciuto3, Abhirup Datta4, Arindam Banerjee5, Owen K Atkin6, Jens Kattge7, Peter E Thornton8, Madhur Anand9, Sabina Burrascano10, Chaeho Byun11, Hans H.C. Cornelissen12, Estelle Forey13, Steven Jansen14, Koen Kramer15, Vanessa Minden16 and Peter B. Reich17, (1)University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Forest Resources, Minneapolis, MN, United States, (2)University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN, United States, (3)Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge, TN, United States, (4)Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States, (5)University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Minneapolis, MN, United States, (6)Australian National University, ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, Research School of Biology, Canberra, Australia, (7)Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany, (8)Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Climate Change Science Institute and Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge, TN, United States, (9)University of Guelph, School of Environmental Sciences, Guelph, ON, Canada, (10)Sapienza University of Rome, Environmental Biology, Rome, Italy, (11)Andong National University, Biological Science and Biotechnology, Andong, South Korea, (12)VU University Amsterdam, Ecological Sciences, Amsterdam, Netherlands, (13)Normandie University, UNIROUEN, INRAE, ECODIV, Rouen, France, (14)Ulm University, Institute of Systematic Botany and Ecology, Ulm, Germany, (15)Wageningen University and Research Center, Forest Ecology and Forest Management, Wageningen, Netherlands, (16)Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Biology, Brussels, Belgium, (17)University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Department of Forest Resources, St. Paul, MN, United States
Abstract:
The land surface carbon cycle as portrayed in Earth System Models relies on a representation of vegetation that compresses ecological diversity into a small set of plant functional types (PFT), which are defined by a unique set of quantitative and categorical plant functional traits. In a typical earth system model, all wild plant life will be averaged into fewer than twenty plant functional types, and a typical grid cell - simulating over a thousand square kilometers - may contain a single PFT. This leveling of ecological diversity in earth system models has provided a good approximation of the average carbon state and fluxes of the land surface, it ignores the influence of functional diversity on productivity that has been shown by experiments and observations across a wide range of scales. In this analysis we use simulations in the Energy Exascale Land Surface Model (ELM) at fifteen flux tower sites across a wide range of climatic and ecological regions to demonstrate that functional diversity can substantially influence carbon uptake. The influence is particularly strong in boreal and tropical regions, changing predicted total carbon uptake by over 30% and 10%, respectively, compared to a single PFT. At one boreal shrub site, different trait combinations can drive over an order of magnitude difference in gross primary production. These results show that functional diversity can substantially influence the terrestrial carbon cycle and should be incorporated into future versions of land surface models.
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