Modeling Carbon and Water Budgets in the Lushi Basin with Biome-BGC

Abstract

In this article, annual evapotranspiration (ET) and net primary productivity (NPP) of four types of vegetation were estimated for the Lushi basin, a subbasin of the Yellow River in China. These four vegetation types include: deciduous broadleaf forest, evergreen needle leaf forest, dwarf shrub and grass. Biome-BGC—a biogeochemical process model was used to calculate annual ET and NPP for each vegetation type in the study area from 1954 to 2000. Daily microclimate data of 47 years monitored by Lushi meteorological station was extrapolated to cover the basin using MT-CLIM, a mountain microclimate simulator. The output files of MT-CLIM were used to feed Biome-BGC. We used average ecophysiological values of each type of vegetation supplied by Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group (NTSG) in the University of Montana as input ecophysiological constants file. The estimates of daily NPP in early July and annual ET on these four biome groups were compared respectively with field measurements and other studies. Daily gross primary production (GPP) of evergreen needle leaf forest measurements were very close to the output of Biome-BGC, but measurements of broadleaf forest and dwarf shrub were much smaller than the simulation result. Simulated annual ET and NPP had a significant correlation with precipitation, indicating precipitation is the major environmental factor affecting ET and NPP in the study area. Precipitation also is the key climatic factor for the interannual ET and NPP variations.