Workshop products (completed and planned)
Jackson, RB, HA Mooney, & ED Schulze 1997 A global budget
for fine root biomass, surface area, and nutrient contents. Proceedings
National Academy of Sciences, USA 94:7362-7366.
Kleidon, A, & M Heimann 1998 A method of determining rooting depth
from a terrestrial biosphere model and its impacts on the global water-
and carbon cycle. Global Change Biology, in press.
Jackson, RB, HJ Schenk, J Canadell, GD Colello, RE Dickinson, T Dunne,
CB Field, P Friedlingstein, M Heimann, K Hibbard, DW Kicklighter, A Kleidon,
RP Neilson, WJ Parton, OE Sala, and MT Sykes 1999 Root distributions and
vegetation change: consequences for global carbon and water fluxes. In
preparation.
Jackson, RB, L Pitelka, eds. 1999 Belowground Ecology and Global Change.
Invited feature in Ecological Applications (feature approved; 6 articles
to be submitted 6/98). Several of the articles are based on workshop ideas
and results. One of these is the new Neilson/Running BIOMAP model
that incorporates the root distributions discussed at the workshop into
a new dynamic global vegetation model.
Related Publications
Jackson, RB 1998 The importance of root distributions for hydrology,
biogeochemistry, and ecosystem functioning. In (J Tenhunen, P Kabat,
eds., Dahlem Conference) Integrating hydrology, ecosystem dynamics, and
biogeochemistry in complex landscapes. John Wiley and Sons, Chichester.
In press.
Workshop participants
Axel Kleidon
Pep Canadell
Pep Canadell
Xia Li
Greg Colello
Ron Neilson
Robert Dickinson Bill Parton
Tom Dunne
Osvaldo Sala
Chris Field
Martin Sykes
Pierre Friedlingstein
Martin Heimann
Kathy Hibbard
Dave Kicklighter
The first workshop accomplished three goals: It 1) Outlined global rooting patterns for biomes and plant functional types, 2) Discussed the issues associated with root representations in global models - the issues and conditions for which they will be important, and 3) Outlined a series of future modeling exercises as sensitivity analyses and subsequent joint ecosystem and global simulations.
Needs Identified at the Workshop (Conceptual Issues)
A) Sensitivity analysis of rooting depth, site-specific and global
B) Global rooting map(s): 1) biome-specific, 2) physical constraints,
3) climatic controls
C) Inferential techniques and inverted rooting depths
Needs Identified at the Workshop (Data Inputs)
Fine root biomass by biome and plant functional type
Data on field capacity and wilting point
Frequency of biological vs physical constraints of rooting depth
Relationship between soil carbon and live roots; soil C and horizon
characterization
Spatial heterogeneity, horizontal pattern (plant scale; landscape scale)
Relationship of LAI to fine roots (area basis!)
Cost function
Effect of soil texture on rooting depth and total root biomass
Turnover time of roots
Root phenology
Live vs dead roots
Rules for penetration of roots (bulk density, pH, C horizon)
Database of adjacent habitats of differing soil depths
Summary of outlined modeling exercises
Site-specific sensitivity runs
A detailed sensitivity analysis on a network of well-documented
field stations (and representing the major global biomes) will provide
baseline information to construct a global rooting depth map and provide
a framework to compare model output at variable rooting depths with existing
site data. Output variables will include net primary productivity (NPP),
gross primary productivity (GPP), actual evapotranspiration (AET), transpiration
(Ts), and stream runoff. For models that utilize multiple soil depths,
the exponential Gale and Grigal (1987) equation (1-bd) will be used to
derive the root biomass distribution, where d= soil depth. The experimental
design for the modeling exercise by each group will include 28 potential
sites with variable soil depths (Table 1).
Ideally, a 10y climate database will be developed for each field
station. The climate data needed by modeling groups include daily precipitation,
and minimum and maximum air temperature. Daily shortwave incident radiation
and daylength will be generated from the latitude, longitude, temperature
and precipitation data supplied by the Biome-BGC group. Daily data can
be aggregated for those models that require monthly inputs (e.g. TEM, CENTURY,
MAPSS, CASA). Sub-hourly climate data will be degraded for SiB. In
addition, relative humidity, wind speed and longwave radiation will be
obtained from the Re-Analysis data available on CD-ROM for SiB. Some models
are driven by LAI (MAPSS, CASA) which will be supplied by either the averaged
seasonal LAI from other models that generate it (BGC, CENTURY) or whichever
model provides the most “reasonable” LAI. Models will initialize
the sites as mature ecosystems and go through at least two 10-year climate
cycles for spin-up purposes.
Table 1. Detailed information for site-specific analyses
Possible Sites
Biome
LTER: Konza
Tallgrass Prairie
CPER (3)
Shortgrass Prairie (burned, unburned)
Coweeta, Harvard Forest, Hubbard Brook
Temperate Forest
Andrews
Temperate Coniferous Forest
Bonanza Creek, Niwot
Boreal Forest, Tundra
Osvaldo's Sites (9)
Semiarid shortgrass/steppe
La Copita Research Area
Subtropical thorn savanna parkland
Luquillo Forest
Tropical forest
Nairobi, Lamtô
Tropical Savanna
Flakalada Boreal Forest
Castaña
Mongolia
Shrub-steppe, grassland
Monte Verde
Tropical forest
Paragominas
Rooting Depths (m): 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 1.0, 1.4, 2.0, 2.4, 2.8, 4.0
Participating Modeling Groups (site-specific data): BIOME3, Biome-BGC,
CASA, CENTURY, MAPSS, SiB, TEM
Global simulations
Carbon models will be initialized with the global Potsdam climate
data from the PIK exercise, and GCM’s will run on their own climate for
global simulations. Models will be initialized with global rooting
depths provided from a variety of possible sources: 1) Biome-specific
rooting depths as provided from the site sensitivity analyses described
above; (2) A map derived from physical soil constraints (Scholes, IGBP);
or (3) a map derived from inferential (e.g. NDVI) datasets. A subset of
models may examine the biogeochemical consequences of shrub encroachment
globally.