AGU: Geophysical Research Letters

 

Editors' Highlight

Improving global vegetation models with satellite data on leaf area

To help monitor the effects of increased greenhouse gas emissions, models have been developed to quantify the spatial and temporal variations in carbon dioxide exchanges between the land surface and the atmosphere. However, many models show large differences in primary productivity and net carbon exchange, hindering scientists' ability to understand the current carbon cycle. To help resolve this, Demarty et al. (2007) studied the global leaf area index (LAI) retrievals from satellite data to see how well they assimilate within France's Dynamic Global Vegetation Model. They found that the added LAI data advance within the model the onset and end of the growing season in the high northern latitudes by 20 days and 40 days, respectively. This results in lower estimates of primary productivity, with large variations from one vegetation biome to another. The authors showed how measurements of primary productivity from ground-based monitoring stations can help minimize model errors, and noted that the further use of satellite products could be substantially enhanced if more ground-based data were used to independently check model results.

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