Elsevier

Ecological Modelling

Volume 222, Issues 20–22, October–November 2011, Pages 3662-3679
Ecological Modelling

Optimization and evaluation of the ANTHRO-BGC model for winter crops in Europe

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2011.08.025Get rights and content

Abstract

Climate change and agricultural development are interrelated processes, both of which take place on the global scale. An accurate representation of crop phenology and physiology in ecosystem models is important in order to investigate the interactive processes between atmosphere and biosphere. A new phenological model for crops has been recently incorporated into the ecosystem model BIOME-BGC. Fruit compartments as well as a module for harvest were added to the original model. Here we explore whether eddy flux measurements of agricultural ecosystems are helpful to identify the spatially generalized ecophysiological parameters of the ANTHRO-BGC model (updated BIOME-BGC model) for croplands. The maximum, minimum, and reference values of the ANTHRO-BGC parameters were derived from a literature review. The sensitive parameters of the model were detected by using global sensitivity analysis. The spatially generalized values of ecophysiological parameters for wheat, barley, and rape within a typical temperature and precipitation range in western and central Europe were identified with the help of optimization algorithms and eddy covariance measurements of carbon and water fluxes of agricultural ecosystems as observational constraints. Gross primary productivity (GPP) provided the best constraint on the model parameters for all the three crop types. The validity range of the parameter values defined by the literature review was proved to be reliable. The predictive ability of the optimized model has been improved for GPP and net ecosystem exchange (NEE), but not for evapotranspiration (ET). The performance of the ANTHRO-BGC model was comparable to the performances of other crop models such as DNDC, CERES-EGC, ORCHIDEE-STICS, and SPA model, tested on multiple sites. The optimized ANTHRO-BGC model was relatively stable in response to the variation of the parameters on multiple sites and years.

Highlights

► The BIOME-BGC model was updated for agricultural ecosystems (named as ANTHRO-BGC). ► Eddy flux measurements were used as constraints to optimize ANTHRO-BGC model using optimization algorithm. ► The spatially generalized ecophysiological parameters of ANTHRO-BGC model were identified for different crops. ► The performance of optimized ANTHRO-BGC model was similar to other ecosystem models. ► Sensitivity and uncertainty analysis were adopted to explore reliable parameters for ANTHRO-BGC.

Introduction

Climate change and agriculture are interrelated processes, both of which take place on global scale. Weather and climate characteristics such as temperature, precipitation, carbon dioxide and water availability as well as the tropospheric carbon dioxide concentration impact the plant growth directly and also indirectly via the influence of insects, plant diseases, and weeds on agricultural production (Hatfield et al., 2008, Iglesias et al., 2009, Gornall et al., 2010). The prediction of responses of plant growth towards the changing climate is prone to uncertainties and it is sometimes difficult to separate climate related effects from other, e.g. management related factors (c.f. Hatfield et al., 2008). However, simple indicators such as maximum temperature, minimum temperature and precipitation can explain 30% or more of the year-to-year variations in global average yields for the six most grown crop species (Lobell and Field, 2007) and are also known to explain the variations of wheat yields on the continental scale in Australian (Nicholls, 1997). In addition, the increase in the atmospheric CO2 to 550 ppm might on average increase C3 crop yields by 10–20% and C4 crop yields by 0–10% (Long et al., 2004, Ainsworth and Long, 2005). These conditions determine the carrying capacity of the biosphere to produce sufficient food for the human population and domesticated animals (Vandermeer et al., 1998). Assessments of the effects of global climate changes on agriculture might help to properly anticipate and adapt farming to maximize agricultural production (Monzon et al., 2007). The role of agricultural ecosystems for the global climate with respect to greenhouse gas emission needs clarification (Bondeau et al., 2007). Numerical models are good supplement tools to simulate the interactivity and feedbacks between climate and agricultural ecosystems (Osborne et al., 2007).

Numerous process-based crop models have been developed during the last few decades and were applied from the plant and plot level up to regional scales as follows: CERES (Tubiello et al., 1995, Hasegawa et al., 2000), WOFOST (van Diepen et al., 1989), STICS (Brisson et al., 1998, Hebert et al., 2005), Sirius model (Jamieson et al., 1998, Lawless et al., 2005), ARCWHEAT model (Travis et al., 1988, Lawless et al., 2005). These models represented the detailed processes of crop growth. The lack of detailed soil data, management information, and crop parameters, however, hindered the application of such detailed models on large spatial scale.

Several ecosystem models such as LPJmL (Bondeau et al., 2007), Agro-IBIS (Kucharik and Brye, 2003), ORCHIDEE-STICS (Smith et al., 2010b) and SiBcrop (Lokupitiya et al., 2009) were recently extended to simulate the carbon and water exchange between atmosphere and agricultural ecosystems on large scales. Parameters used in these models were either measured in experiments or taken from literature and they have been applied to explore the contribution of agricultural ecosystems to climate change (Bondeau et al., 2007, Lokupitiya et al., 2009) and to estimate yields of crops (Kucharik, 2003, Kucharik and Brye, 2003).

The BIOME-BGC model has been widely used to study natural ecosystems with emphases on parameterization and sensitivity analyses for forest ecosystems and grasslands (White et al., 2000, Tatarinov and Cienciala, 2006, Chiesi et al., 2007, Haszpra et al., 2011). These parameterization and sensitivity analyses were based on literature review. Trusilova et al. (2008) used a Bayesian parameter estimation technique to improve the predictive ability of the BIOME-BGC model for forests using eddy flux measurements as constraints. There are only two studies that we are aware of, which used the BIOME-BGC model to simulate water and carbon exchanges between the atmosphere and agricultural ecosystems. Wang et al. (2005) simulated water and carbon fluxes over crops in China. A recent study updated the BIOME-BGC model (Agro-BGC) to investigate the carbon, nitrogen and water balance of agricultural ecosystems and grasslands (Di Vittorio et al., 2010). The five unavailable parameters for switch grass (C4 perennial grass) were mathematical optimized using observational data from multiple sites (Di Vittorio et al., 2010).

With the model-data fusion methods, eddy covariance measurements of CO2 and H2O fluxes have been used to improve the performance of several process-based ecosystem models (Knorr and Kattge, 2005, Sacks et al., 2006, Mo et al., 2008, Williams et al., 2009). The data provided by eddy covariance measurements can help to better understand the processes driving the carbon and water exchange between atmosphere and biosphere. The multiple-year eddy covariance measurements provided good constraints on photosynthetic parameters (Braswell et al., 2005). It, however, provides relatively poor constraints on parameters related to soil decomposition that vary at considerably longer time scales than canopy photosynthesis and transpiration in forest ecosystems (Braswell et al., 2005). Four parameters of the model at maximum could be determined independently from the eddy covariance measurements, and the mean of the maximum potential electron transport rate of all leaves within the canopy was best determined by the measurements of net CO2 flux (Wang et al., 2001). Only recently, eddy covariance measurements data for agricultural ecosystems became available in Europe (Moors et al., 2010). This provides the possibility to develop and optimize the model parameters for these ecosystems using eddy flux measurements as constraints.

The aim of this study was to identify the spatially generalized ecophysiological parameters of the updated BIOME-BGC (ANTHRO-BGC) model for western and central European croplands by using eddy flux measurements and mathematical methods. The following questions were addressed: (1) Which parameter of ANTHRO-BGC model has relatively most important effects on model simulation? (2) Which observed variable or combination of them provide the best constraint on the parameters of ANTHRO-BGC model? (3) How many eddy flux measurements samples from different sites are enough to constrain the parameters of large scale ecosystem model? (4) Is the range of the parameters derived from literature reliable? (5) Is the estimation of optimized ANTHRO-BGC model on multiple sites and years trustable?

In our study, the global sensitivity analysis (SA) was used to detect the most sensitive parameters of the ANTHRO-BGC. The eddy flux measurements gross primary productivity (GPP), net ecosystem exchange (NEE) and evapotranspiration (ET) were used as constraint to optimize the parameters of ANTHRO-BGC model by using a mathematical optimization algorithm. Uncertainty analysis was adopted to explore the level of confidence of the estimates of optimized ANTHRO-BGC model on multiple site-year.

Section snippets

Model testing sites

The sensitivity analysis, parameter optimization and uncertainty analysis of the ANTHRO-BGC model was based on the daily observation data from eddy covariance measurements of the croplands in Europe (http://gaia.agraria.unitus.it/DATABASE/carboeuropeip/mustlogin.aspx) (Table 1, Fig. 1). Crop rotation and fertilizer management were applied on most of these sites during the carbon flux observation period (Moors et al., 2010, Osborne et al., 2010). Annual mean air temperature and precipitation of

Sensitivity analysis

The model had similar responses to the change of the target parameters for wheat, barley, and rape (Table 3). The model was sensitive to the five parameters: canopy light extinction coefficient (LT_ET), fraction of leaf nitrogen in Rubisco (FLRN), carbon allocation ratio of new fine root to new leaf (FR_to_LF), carbon allocation ratio of new fruits to new leaf (FT_to_LF) and canopy specific leaf area (SP_LAI).

A higher LT_ET indicates that the plant has a higher light absorbing ability (

Conclusions

In this study the most important parameters of the updated ANTHRO-BGC model were detected through SA. The spatially generalized ecophysiological parameters of the ANTHRO-BGC model were identified for wheat, barley, and rape. The simulation ability of the ANTHRO-BGC model was significantly improved in comparison with BIOME-BGC because a new validated phenology model for crops was implemented and the optimal value of the most import parameters of the ANTHRO-BGC model were identified using a

Financial support

A Ph.D. scholarship is provided to SM by the Max-Planck Society (MPG) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) through a joint doctoral program and Leibniz-Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF). AG acknowledges financial support by the German Research Council (DFG).

Acknowledgements

We thank Bernard Heinesch, Corinna Rebmann, Ceschia Eric, Christian Bernhofer, Enzo Magliulo, Eric Larmanou, Laffineur Quentin, Marc Aubinet, Nina Buchmann, Olivier Zurfluh, Pierre Béziat, Pierre Cellier, Paul di Tommasi, Werner Eugster, Werner Kutsch, and Thomas Grünwald for sharing their measurement data. We thank two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments. We thank Xenia Specka for discussing the sensitivity and uncertainty analysis.

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