Energy, water and carbon exchanges in managed forest ecosystems: description, sensitivity analysis and evaluation of the INRAE GO+ model, version 3.0

Abstract

<jats:p>Abstract. The mechanistic model GO+ describes the functioning and growth of managed forests based upon biophysical and biogeochemical processes. The biophysical and biogeochemical processes included are modelled using standard formulations of radiative transfer, convective heat exchange, evapotranspiration, photosynthesis, respiration, plant phenology, growth and mortality, biomass nutrient content, and soil carbon dynamics. The forest ecosystem is modelled as three layers, namely the tree overstorey, understorey and soil. The vegetation layers include stems, branches and foliage and are partitioned dynamically between sunlit and shaded fractions. The soil carbon sub-model is an adaption of the Roth-C model to simulate the impact of forest operations. The model runs at an hourly time-step. It represents a forest stand covering typically 1 ha and can be straightforwardly up-scaled across gridded data at regional, country or continental levels. GO+ accounts for both the immediate and long-term impacts of forest operations on energy, water and carbon exchanges within the soil-vegetation-atmosphere continuum. It includes exhaustive and versatile descriptions of management operations (soil preparation, regeneration, vegetation control, selective thinning, clear-cutting, coppicing, etc.), thus permitting the effects of a wide variety of forest management strategies to be estimated: from close-to-nature to intensive. This paper examines the sensitivity of the model to its main parameters and estimates how errors in parameter values are propagated into the predicted values of its main output variables. We show how the model performs when compared with observations such as time series of forest-atmosphere exchanges of energy, water and CO2 monitored over Douglas fir, European beech and pine forests of different ages as well as long-term series of tree growth, soil water and soil carbon data recorded at continuously monitored forests plots. We also illustrate the capacity of the GO+ model to simulate the provision of key ecosystem services, such as the long-term storage of carbon in biomass and soil under various management and climate scenarios. </jats:p>