L04: ELM-FATES global logging simulations

Full Title

Investigating the local biogeophysical impact logging as forced by global forest harvest carbon and harvest area in a vegetation demographic model (FATES)

First Author

  • Shijie Shu

  • sshu@lbl.gov

All Authors

Shijie Shu, Jennifer A. Holm, Alan Di Vittorio, Charles D. Koven, Ryan G. Knox and Gregory Lemieux

Climate & Ecosystem Sciences Division, 

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Topic

Land - River - Human

Project

E3SM

Abstract

Forest logging is one of the most common anthropogenic disturbances reshaping the historical and future global forest patterns and contributing a large amount to land use emissions. However, the impacts of wood logging on land biophysical properties, when also taking into account ecosystem demography, canopy structure, and biogeochemical cycling lack comprehensive global studies. Terrestrial ecosystem models are common tools to simulate wood logging and its consequence on terrestrial carbon cycle. Global land use drivers for these models often use estimates of harvested area as their forcing. Carbon-based harvest data are usually available from countries’ historical forest inventory or regional censuses, providing more precise wood harvested carbon compared to area-based data. We explore the consequence of wood logging by incorporating a global C-based harvest algorithm into the Functionally Assembled Terrestrial Ecosystem Simulator (FATES), a vegetation demographic model with full ability to simulate dynamic vegetation and land cover heterogeneity dynamics. We then drive the model using both the area-based and carbon-based harvest estimates from multiple variant of Land Use Harmonized Dataset v2 (LUH2) datasets with different spatial-temporal pattern of harvest rates.  FATES separately resolves the dynamics of both primary and secondary lands, with separate land use drivers on each. Here we evaluate the detailed processes of the formation of secondary forest and degradation of primary forest lands and their impact on biogeophysical properties and surface energy balance of harvested forest. We evaluate the harvested carbon and land area for both primary and secondary lands in FATES with the LUH2 products. We compare nine historical experiments from 1850 to the recent decade under 3 different categories: 1) no global wood logging, versus 2) historical wood logging with harvest driven by LUH2 harvest area, and 3) historical wood logging with harvest driven by LUH2 harvest carbon, to estimate the potential global impact on modeled land physical properties from both primary and secondary lands. By comparing to the carbon-driven and area-driven harvest amounts, we find that the carbon-based logging would largely change the spatial and temporal pattern of the land biogeophysical impact of logging.

In-person

yes

Poster

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