Modelling and Validating Biomass Potentials over Agricultural and Forest Areas
Abstract
Using vegetation models to describe the carbon uptake by vegetation, Net Primary Production (NPP) has become an important tool to study the mechanisms of carbon exchange and to quantfy the magnitude of terrestrial carbon sinks and sources. Various vegetation models are driven to simulate the carbon cycle in vegetated areas to estimate the NPP for different regions on regional to national scales. In this study the three models BETHY/DLR, G4M and EPIC are used to compute NPP for agricultural and forest test areas using hgh resolution datasets for the Wienerwald, Harz and Marchfeld regions in Austria and Germany. For the forest test areas, a validation for the G4M model is performed. Underestimations of up to 57% are shown, which are linked with high coefficients of determination (R2 up to 0.75). For the agricultural test area a sensitivity analysis for the EPIC and BETHY/DLR is performed. Here it was demonstrated that variabilities of up to 62% could occur with changing climate conditions.