TITLE:

CHALLENGES IN CALCULATING AND PREDICTING LARGE SCALE CARBON FLUXES IN THE ARCTIC AND THE PACIFIC RIM (No. 16)

DATE:

Friday, September 12th, 2003

TIME:

3:30 PM

LOCATION:

GMCS 214

SPEAKER:

Joe Verfaillie, Global Change Research Group, Department of Biology, San Diego State University

ABSTRACT:

Because of the anthropogenic release of huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, resulting in global change, there is a premium on understanding how much of this anthropogenic carbon dioxide is being removed by the world’s vegetation, and perhaps more importantly, how much might be removed in coming enturies.

The challenges of calculating and predicting large scale terrestrial carbon fluxes are monumental, the prediction of these large scale fluxes into the future is even more difficult. Technology in the ecological sciences has progressed and makes available some amazing tools. Point measurements of carbon flux using eddy covariance can now be made continuously over years, with the data reported in near new time. These precise, continuous measurements can be compared to environmental data (soil moisture, light, air and soil moisture, etc.), again in near real time. Aircraft flux measurements, from SDSU’s environmental research

aircraft, provide continue environmental and flux measurements in space, over several hundred km) but are discontinuous in time.

At the other end of the spatial scale, global estimates of carbon flux can be made with remote sensing (e.g. MODIS), and global ecosystem models (e.g. TEM, Century). These approaches leave a large, unverified region in space and time (verification of large scale estimates from satellite measurements and model estimates). To verify our ability to accurately estimate large scale terrestrial carbon fluxes, and to understand the interactions of marine, atmospheric, and terrestrial components of the earth system, a research program focused on the Pacific Rim is being designed and implemented.

Computational Sciences are critical to the success of these endeavors

HOST:

Duane Steffey

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