The long-term goal of ESCOBA is to investigate, quantify, model and eventually predict the behavior of the global carbon cycle in response to the perturbation by man and with respect to its interaction with the physical climate system on timescales of up to several hundred years. The objectives of ESCOBA-Biosphere are to forecast interactions (impacts and feedbacks) between terrestrial biosphere, soils, and climate on global scale. Existing vegetation and soil models developed during the first phase of the project will be validated and run for several years. The improved description and modeling of the main processes that govern the role of vegetation and soils in the carbon cycle will be the main task of the project.


The ESCOBA-Biosphere project will investigate vegetation and soil processes on
time-scales from days to a few years. Terrestrial Biogeochemical Models (TBM) have
been built that account for processes such as photosynthesis, autotrophic and
heterotrophic respiration, carbon allocation, canopy development, and litter formation.
Models will be run with short time steps, typically from hours to day, and further
integrated to predict daily to monthly average of carbon and water exchanges, and
monthly to annual Net Primary Productivity (NPP) and Net Ecosystem Productivity
(NEP). As far as possible, basic vegetation and soil processes will be described in a
mechanistic way in order to increase the reliability of the models when they will be run
under different environmental conditions such as increased atmospheric CO2 concentration, changing temperature and precipitation. The main tools for testing this
reliability will be the spatial and interannual variability of climate during the past 10
years and its impact on the carbon cycle as monitored by satellite data, ground
measurements of NPP and CO2 fluxes, and atmospheric CO2 and carbon isotopes
concentration measurements.
The project will improve vegetation and soil processes as well as validation procedures.
Process studies will focus on an improved modeling of the complex impacts of climate
and resources (CO2, water, light, nutrients) on plant growth, litter fall and soil carbon
turnover.
A specific task is devoted to better understand soil processes (carbon storage and
turnover, erosion, heterotrophic respiration, coupling to TBM). It will be achieved by
collection of data and development of empirical maps and models, and by validation of
soil respiration models on the basis of empirical studies.
The study of human influences on the carbon cycle and ecosystem functioning will be
incorporated, with respect to temperate and boreal forests, with an emphasis on forests
of the EU.