Historical trends and future projections of global biomass production of terrestrial ecosystems based on their natural and anthropogenic drivers.

Biomass production (BP) is a key process of terrestrial ecosystems that provides essential natural resources to our society such as food, fibers, timber and fuel. Moreover, BP is a key component of the global carbon cycle and, as such, it crucially influences our climate. Intensive research on BP is carried out worldwide since the 1960s. However, we still lack harmonized global databases and accurate models to elucidate the natural and anthropogenic drivers of BP and, as a consequence, we are still not able to produce historical trends and future projections of global BP. In this project, we will fill these knowledge gaps by addressing four detailed objectives: (1) determine the environmental- and anthropogenic drivers of BP for the major terrestrial biomes (e.g. boreal forests, temperate croplands, arid grasslands), (2) build empirical relationships (equations) to estimate BP at biome- and planetary level, (3) use these relationships to improve a typical dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM) and (4) use the improved model to produce global BP estimates for the past, current and future, spanning from 6000 BC (before agriculture) to 2050. Objective 1 and 2 will be achieved using a new global BP database which will extend a previous smaller database produced by the team of the PI. Objective 3 and 4 will be met using the DGVM ORCHIDEE, which is the land surface component of one of the climate models (IPSL) used to produce the IPCC climate scenarios. The new insights, data and tools that will be delivered by the project will, on the one hand, advance our understanding of terrestrial ecosystems and their human influence and, on the other hand, provide BP projections that will help preparing our society to the challenges brought by global change.

Keywords:ECOLOGY, PLANT ECOLOGY, VEGETATION ECOLOGY

Disciplines:Terrestrial ecology