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Assimilation of Remotely Sensed Leaf Area Index into the Noah-MP Land Surface Model: Impacts on Water and Carbon Fluxes and States over the Continental U.S.

Authors :
Sujay V Kumar
David M Mocko
Shugong Wang
Christa D Peters-Lidard
Jordan S Borak
Source :
Journal of Hydrometeorology. 20(7)
Publication Year :
2019
Publisher :
United States: NASA Center for Aerospace Information (CASI), 2019.

Abstract

Accurate representation of vegetation states is required for the modeling of terrestrial water-energy-carbon exchanges and the characterization of the impacts of natural and anthropogenic vegetation changes on the land surface. This study presents a comprehensive evaluation of the impact of assimilating remote sensing-based Leaf Area Index (LAI) retrievals over the Continental U.S. in the Noah-MP land surface model, during a time period of 2000 to 2017. The results demonstrate that the assimilation has a beneficial impact on the simulation of key water budget terms such as soil moisture, evapotranspiration, snow depth, terrestrial water storage and streamflow, when compared with a large suite of reference datasets. In addition, the assimilation of LAI is also found to improve the carbon fluxes of Gross Primary Production (GPP) and Net Ecosystem Exchange (NEE). Most prominent improvements in the water and carbon variables are observed over the agricultural areas of the U.S., where assimilation improves the representation of vegetation seasonality impacted by cropping schedules. The systematic, added improvements from assimilation in a configuration that employs high quality boundary conditions highlight the significant utility of LAI data assimilation in capturing the impacts of vegetation changes.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
15257541 and 1525755X
Volume :
20
Issue :
7
Database :
NASA Technical Reports
Journal :
Journal of Hydrometeorology
Notes :
NNX17AE79A, , KJR-582, , NNG15HQ01C
Publication Type :
Report
Accession number :
edsnas.20190025768
Document Type :
Report
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-18-0237.1