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Harvard Forest Symposium Abstract 2014

  • Title: Carbon-13 in the Ecosystem Demography Model (ED2)
  • Primary Author: Daniel Scott (Harvard)
  • Additional Authors: Paul Moorcroft (Harvard University)
  • Abstract:

    As part of an ongoing empirical study that is using the Carbon 13 (13C) isotope to track the fate of carbon within the Harvard Forest ecosystem, we have incorporated 13C accounting into the Ecosystem Demography Model (ED2.1). As described in more detail below, this work has resulted in an extended version of the model (EDi), which now quantifies 13C assimilated during photosynthesis and propagates it through representations of plant and ecosystem. Two formulations of this have been implemented. The first method is designed to parallel the model's native mechanistic carbon accounting, and the other is designed to investigate alternative, prescriptive hypothesis concerning 13C distribution. These 13C accounting schemes will be used with empirical measurements of the isotopic composition of NEE, soil surface efflux, the canopy airspace, and root respiration, along with non-isotopic measurements of water, heat, and carbon fluxes, above ground stem growth rates, mortality rates, litter production, and root mass and growth rates to constrain a number of important but poorly constrained components of the above and below-ground carbon dynamics within the Harvard Forest ecosystem; In particular, the seasonal and annual patterns of above- versus below-ground carbon allocation, and the dynamics of plant carbon allocation between structural, foliar, and storage tissues. We will then use EDi to quantify how 13C isotopic constraints contribute to improved estimates of seasonal, annual, and multi-decadal scale reagonal carbon storage.

  • Research Category: Ecological Informatics and Modelling
    Forest-Atmosphere Exchange
    Physiological Ecology, Population Dynamics, and Species Interactions
    Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics