Developing and testing Dynamic Global Vegetation Models in the context of climate change in Amazonia

Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs) are often run coupled to climate models and are important for informing climate change policy. However, these models have not been extensively tested in Amazonian ecosystems. This project aims to compare these models, with the objective to simulate interactions between climate, forests and land use in Amazonia. The project is led by Paul Moorcroft at Harvard, in cooperation with ecosystem modelling groups from the University of Arizona, the Woods Hole Research Centre and the University of Viçosa (Brazil). One component of the project involves the use of vegetation models to evaluate ecosystem dynamics at a number of Amazonian sites including RAINFOR sites, flux tower sites and sites of disturbance experiments (fire, drought and logging). A second component of the project involves running the models over the entire Amazon region, over recent decades and into the future, following different climate change scenarios. The Oxford team is running simulations with JULES (Joint UK Land Environment Simulator), the UK community land surface model.

The Oxford component of this work is being implemented by Dr David Galbraith

Thus work is funded by the Gordon and Bettu Moore Foundation.