New publication in Scientific Reports

Improving global climate-vegetation models with satellite observations

In a new paper published in Nature Scientitifc Reports at 10. December 2019, we demonstrate the oppurtunities and limitations how simulations of a dynamic global vegetation model can be constrained with multiple satellite observations. We used satellite observations of land cover, the fraction of photosynthetic active radiation, sun-induced fluorescence, biomass, and burned area to constrain model parameters for phenology, productivity, vegetation carbon turnover and dynamics. This is currently the most comprehensive model-data integration study with a vegetation model at the global scale.

The work was led by Matthias Forkel (TU Dresden) as a joint effort between the Postdam-Institute for Climate Impact Research, TU Wien, and the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry Jena.

Forkel, M., Drüke, M., Thurner, M., Dorigo, W., Schaphoff, S., Thonicke, K., Bloh, W. von, Carvalhais, N. (2019).
Constraining modelled global vegetation dynamics and carbon turnover using multiple satellite observations.
Scientific Reports 9, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55187-7