Periodic Reporting for period 1 - LEAF-2-TBM (From LEAF to Terrestrial Biosphere Model: Integrating multi-scale observations of highly diverse tropical ecosystems for global scale simulations)
Période du rapport: 2020-06-01 au 2022-05-31
LEAF2TBM targets the unresolved challenge for TBMs to simulate the effects of plant diversity on tropical forest ecosystem functioning and associated global biogeochemical cycles based on an integrated assessment of processes across different scales. This will be achieve by collecting unique concomitant field observations of carbon dioxide and water vapor exchanges measured at multiple scales (from individuals to ecosystem) and state-of-the-art modelling approaches to:
1) accurately quantify the effect of the functional diversity on ecosystems fluxes for two forests located in the Congo Basin and Amazon;
2) disentangle the roles of species composition and environment on ecosystems fluxes;
3) and provide a robust estimate of the global C budget uncertainty for tropical forests in TBMs.
The main objective of LEAF2TBM is to clearly define the effect of local functional diversity on ecosystem carbon and water fluxes in order to improve the robustness of TBMs based on ecological theories that link plant traits, local environment and ecosystem functioning.
We evaluated the performances of current state-of-the art Terrestrial Biosphere Models in reproducing carbon stocks and fluxes of pantropical forests. None of the models are able to capture the spatial and temporal variability of carbon stocks. This work led a to clear review of the known sources of heterogeneity in tropical forests and what are the priorities to improve TBMs.
Current results are in preparation for publication and dissemination, and have only been disseminated so far between partner institutes.
Most analyses, model developments and simulations based on fieldwork data (delayed by COVID19) are still ongoing.
Even if delayed, once completed, this project will provide a robust assessment on the role of forest diversity on carbon and water fluxes of tropical rainforest, better calibration of Terrestrial Biosphere Models as well as reduced uncertainties on the global carbon budget through a better representation of tropical forest heterogeneity in TBMs.