Optimization of ecosystem model parameters using spatio-temporal soil moisture information

Parameters in process-based terrestrial ecosystem models are often nonlinearly related to the water flux to the atmosphere, and they also change temporally and spatially. Therefore, for estimating soil moisture, process-based terrestrial ecosystem models inevitably need to specify spatially and temporally variant model parameters. This study presents a two-stage data assimilation scheme (TSDA) to spatially and temporally optimize some key parameters of an ecosystem model which are closely related to soil moisture. At the first stage, a simplified ecosystem model, namely the Boreal Ecosystem Productivity Simulator (BEPS), is used to obtain the prior estimation of daily soil moisture. After the spatial distribution of 0–10 cm surface soil moisture is derived from remote sensing, an Ensemble Kalman Filter is used to minimize the difference between the remote sensing model results, through optimizing some model parameters spatially. At the second stage, BEPS is reinitialized using the optimized parameters to provide the updated model predictions of daily soil moisture. TSDA has been applied to an arid and semi-arid area of northwest China, and the performance of the model for estimating daily 0–10 cm soil moisture after parameter optimization was validated using field measurements. Results indicate that the TSDA developed in this study is robust and efficient in both temporal and spatial model parameter optimization. After performing the optimization, the correlation (r²) between model-predicted 0–10 cm soil moisture and field measurement increased from 0.66 to 0.75. It is demonstrated that spatial and temporal optimization of ecosystem model parameters can not only improve the model prediction of daily soil moisture but also help to understand the spatial and temporal variation of some key parameters in an ecosystem model and the corresponding ecological mechanisms controlling the variation.