West Coast Breakout

Status of west coast project• ORCA

– Field intensives & data synthesis completed in wildfires, thinning, woody encroachment studies

– Remote sensing disturbance maps (30 yr change detection) of NCA to be assessed

– 3 EC tower sites, 5 precision CO2 sites– Ran Biome-BGC 30 yr over OR, and will run model over NCA– Top-down model testing (STILT, CFLUX model with disturbance

and moisture effects on respiration and GPP)

• S CA– Focus on natural C budgets, recent years– Remote sensing mapping of logging on public lands, agric SCA– 6 EC tower sites established in S-CA 2006 (9 total in CA)– ran CASA over CA– Modeling interannual variability in emissions transport (fire, fossil)

What are the critical knowledge gaps?

• Ecosystem impacts of climate change (decline, insect outbreaks). Plan for this aspect in future process modeling, analysis. – Crown mortality via remote sensing

• Standing dead…after wildfire, insect outbreaks can persist for decades, but prognostic models assume killed trees start to decompose immediately. – Need data on fall rates– Could quantify necromass spatially

(lidar/optical fusion), locally

What synthesis and integration activities can help address knowledge gaps?

• Treatment of uncertainty in measurements and models– CASA: Monte-Carlo simulation with defined

pdf– Use model intercomparison to address

uncertainty of estimates (patterns of model-model residuals) – where do they agree, disagree and why?

Formal intercomparisons of forward modeling methods

– Compare SCA CASA with ORCA Biome-BGC approach

– Compare SCA CASA with C. Potter’s continental CASA

Comparison of forward and inverse modeling methods

• Included in ORCA concept • Compare ORCA top-down to CASA results

What are the next steps to move forward?

Data-model comparisons, remote sensing error assessment in CA:

• Compare CASA model results with ORCA field thinning study in NCA (NPP and NEP)

• ORCA determined fire emissions and carbon transformations from inventory data (before and after). Goulden group will explore doing the same for CA fires to compare with CASA emissions estimates

• Compare age/disturbance maps from ORCA (all lands) with UC (logging on public lands, agric. crops) in overlap area

• Bill Riley, Marc Fischer provide fossil emissions mapping• CarbonTracker for background CO2

Important Issues - Top-Down• Top-down component requires

continued precision CO2 measurements – incoming air from Pacific, into Great Basin

• Need additional technician for calibrations

• Link with offshore sampling (need similar CO2 system onboard)

• Possibility of adding similar W-E transect of sites in SCA (Schimel)

• Need intercalibration activity similar to AmeriFlux (roving system, shipped cal stds)