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Title: Comparison of Big-Leaf, Two-Big-Leaf, and Two-Leaf Upscaling Schemes for Evapotranspiration Estimation Using Coupled Carbon-Water Modeling

Abstract

Evapotranspiration (ET) is commonly estimated using the Penman-Monteith equation, which assumes that the plant canopy is a big leaf (BL) and the water flux from vegetation is regulated by canopy stomatal conductance (Gs). However, BL has been found to be unsuitable for terrestrial biosphere models built on the carbon-water coupling principle because it fails to capture daily variations of gross primary productivity (GPP). A two-big-leaf scheme (TBL) and a two-leaf scheme (TL) that stratify a canopy into sunlit and shaded leaves have been developed to address this issue. However, there is a lack of comparison of these upscaling schemes for ET estimation, especially on the difference between TBL and TL. We find that TL shows strong performance (r2 = 0.71, root-mean-square error = 0.05 mm/h) in estimating ET at nine eddy covariance towers in Canada. BL simulates lower annual ET and GPP than TL and TBL. The biases of estimated ET and GPP increase with leaf area index (LAI) in BL and TBL, and the biases of TL show no trends with LAI. BL miscalculates the portions of light-saturated and light-unsaturated leaves in the canopy, incurring negative biases in its flux estimation. TBL and TL showed improved yet different GPP and ET estimations. This differencemore » is attributed to the lower Gsand intercellular CO2 concentration simulated in TBL compared to their counterparts in TL. Finally, we suggest to use TL for ET modeling to avoid the uncertainty propagated from the artificial upscaling of leaf-level processes to the canopy scale in BL and TBL.« less

Authors:
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3];  [4]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [5]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [6];  [3]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [2];  [7]
  1. Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada)
  3. Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada); Nanjing Univ. (China)
  4. Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC (Canada)
  5. Environment Canada, Toronto, ON (Canada)
  6. McMaster Univ., Hamilton, ON (Canada)
  7. Queen's Univ., Kingston, ON (Canada)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC); Canada Research Chairs Program; Canadian Space Agency
OSTI Identifier:
1476596
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC02-05CH11231; 14SUSMAPTO
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Journal of Geophysical Research. Biogeosciences
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 123; Journal Issue: 1; Journal ID: ISSN 2169-8953
Publisher:
American Geophysical Union
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; evapotranspiration; big-leaf; two-leaf; canopy stomatal conductance; gross primary productivity; Penman-Monteith equation

Citation Formats

Luo, Xiangzhong, Chen, Jing M., Liu, Jane, Black, T. Andrew, Croft, Holly, Staebler, Ralf, He, Liming, Arain, M. Altaf, Chen, Bin, Mo, Gang, Gonsamo, Alemu, and McCaughey, Harry. Comparison of Big-Leaf, Two-Big-Leaf, and Two-Leaf Upscaling Schemes for Evapotranspiration Estimation Using Coupled Carbon-Water Modeling. United States: N. p., 2018. Web. doi:10.1002/2017jg003978.
Luo, Xiangzhong, Chen, Jing M., Liu, Jane, Black, T. Andrew, Croft, Holly, Staebler, Ralf, He, Liming, Arain, M. Altaf, Chen, Bin, Mo, Gang, Gonsamo, Alemu, & McCaughey, Harry. Comparison of Big-Leaf, Two-Big-Leaf, and Two-Leaf Upscaling Schemes for Evapotranspiration Estimation Using Coupled Carbon-Water Modeling. United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017jg003978
Luo, Xiangzhong, Chen, Jing M., Liu, Jane, Black, T. Andrew, Croft, Holly, Staebler, Ralf, He, Liming, Arain, M. Altaf, Chen, Bin, Mo, Gang, Gonsamo, Alemu, and McCaughey, Harry. Tue . "Comparison of Big-Leaf, Two-Big-Leaf, and Two-Leaf Upscaling Schemes for Evapotranspiration Estimation Using Coupled Carbon-Water Modeling". United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017jg003978. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1476596.
@article{osti_1476596,
title = {Comparison of Big-Leaf, Two-Big-Leaf, and Two-Leaf Upscaling Schemes for Evapotranspiration Estimation Using Coupled Carbon-Water Modeling},
author = {Luo, Xiangzhong and Chen, Jing M. and Liu, Jane and Black, T. Andrew and Croft, Holly and Staebler, Ralf and He, Liming and Arain, M. Altaf and Chen, Bin and Mo, Gang and Gonsamo, Alemu and McCaughey, Harry},
abstractNote = {Evapotranspiration (ET) is commonly estimated using the Penman-Monteith equation, which assumes that the plant canopy is a big leaf (BL) and the water flux from vegetation is regulated by canopy stomatal conductance (Gs). However, BL has been found to be unsuitable for terrestrial biosphere models built on the carbon-water coupling principle because it fails to capture daily variations of gross primary productivity (GPP). A two-big-leaf scheme (TBL) and a two-leaf scheme (TL) that stratify a canopy into sunlit and shaded leaves have been developed to address this issue. However, there is a lack of comparison of these upscaling schemes for ET estimation, especially on the difference between TBL and TL. We find that TL shows strong performance (r2 = 0.71, root-mean-square error = 0.05 mm/h) in estimating ET at nine eddy covariance towers in Canada. BL simulates lower annual ET and GPP than TL and TBL. The biases of estimated ET and GPP increase with leaf area index (LAI) in BL and TBL, and the biases of TL show no trends with LAI. BL miscalculates the portions of light-saturated and light-unsaturated leaves in the canopy, incurring negative biases in its flux estimation. TBL and TL showed improved yet different GPP and ET estimations. This difference is attributed to the lower Gsand intercellular CO2 concentration simulated in TBL compared to their counterparts in TL. Finally, we suggest to use TL for ET modeling to avoid the uncertainty propagated from the artificial upscaling of leaf-level processes to the canopy scale in BL and TBL.},
doi = {10.1002/2017jg003978},
journal = {Journal of Geophysical Research. Biogeosciences},
number = 1,
volume = 123,
place = {United States},
year = {Tue Jan 09 00:00:00 EST 2018},
month = {Tue Jan 09 00:00:00 EST 2018}
}

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Figure 1 Figure 1: Schematic descriptions of the three upscaling schemes: BL, TBL, and TL. In reality, gs of each leaf is different. BL integrates gs into Gs; TBL integrates gs into Gs for sunlit and shaded leaves, respectively; TL uses the average of gs of each leaf group and avoids themore » calculation of Gs.« less

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