Evaluation of the suitability of the land surface model JULES for climate impact studies in Belgian ecosystems
Catherine Van den Hoof1, Marc Aubinet2, Bernard Heinesch2, Caroline Vincke3
1 Biosphere Impact Studies Unit, Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, Mol, Belgium
2 Unité de Physique des Biosystèmes, Faculté Universitaire des Sciences Agronomiques de Gembloux, Gembloux, Belgium
3 Département des Sciences du Milieu et de l’Aménagement du Territoire, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium
2 Unité de Physique des Biosystèmes, Faculté Universitaire des Sciences Agronomiques de Gembloux, Gembloux, Belgium
3 Département des Sciences du Milieu et de l’Aménagement du Territoire, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium
O 6.5 in SVAT-Modeling and scale interactions
08.10.2009, 11:40-12:05, Kutschenhaus
The increasing demand for land and water resources, in conjunction with climate change, are expected to significantly alter the terrestrial ecosystems and, by consequence, the energy, water, and carbon fluxes between land and atmosphere. These changes will vary substantially from region to region and within regions, from ecosystem to ecosystem. In order to evaluate the sustainability issues that we will face in the near future in Belgium, we need to understand the relationships between the land-surface characteristics and the energy, water and carbon cycles for the different ecosystem types found in Belgium. Furthermore, we need to quantify how these relationships might change with changes in environmental conditions, such as land cover and climate. Land surface models are important tools for understanding and predicting these relationships.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the suitability of the land surface model JULES (Cox et al., 1998) to simulate carbon, water vapour and energy fluxes in Belgian ecosystems, and to analyse the response of the different ecosystems to climatic factors. JULES, the UK Land Environment Simulator, was originally designed to represent the land surface in meteorological and climate models. Its scheme includes the full hydrological cycle and vegetation effects on energy, water, and carbon fluxes. JULES has been shown to improve the simulation of global surface climate when included in a climate model, but has also been tested at field site and hydrological catchment’s scales (Harding et al., 2000; Harris et al., 2004).
In this study, the evaluation of the land surface model JULES consists of a thorough sensitivity analysis to the environmental conditions, i.e. soil, vegetation and climate, found in the major Belgian ecosystems. Next, the model is tested against the surface flux data collected for several consecutive years at the different FLUXNET and CarboEurope projects sites in Belgium. For this purpose, JULES is parameterised according to the site-specific vegetation and soil characteristics. To evaluate the seasonal and inter-annual climate variability the model is forced with the meteorological data measured at the field sites. So far this study has been restricted to two sites, Lonzée (Moureaux et al., 2006) and Vielsalm (Laitat et al., 2000), both located in the Southern part of Belgium (the Walloon region). Lonzée is an agricultural site and, a mixed forest covers the Vielsalm site. The preliminary results of this study will be presented.
Full presentation file:
fp_O_6.5 (19.11.2009 14:18)