Atmosphere-terrestrial ecosystem interactions: implications for coupled modeling

Pielke, R.A., Schimel, D.S., Lee, T.J., Kittel, T.G.F. and Zeng, X., 1993. Atmosphereterrestrial ecosystem interactions: implications for coupled modeling. EcoL Modelling, 67: 5-18. This paper overviews the important interactions between ecosystem and atmospheric dynamics. Examples of suggested procedures to model these interrelationships are introduced. The concept of equilibrium versus non-equilibrium non-linear dynamics in the context of chaos is discussed. The paper concludes with a description of a parameterization of vegetation effects on atmospheric structure, including a model sensitivity simulation of the importance of land surface processes on this structure. 1. MODELING ATMOSPHERE-ECOSYSTEM INTERACTION There are two approaches to a tmospher ic te r res t r i a l ecosystem interactive models: one-way interact ion and two-way interaction. In a one-way interactive model, a tmospher ic or ecosystem character izat ion is specified as input to an ecosystem dynamic or meteorological model, respectively. An example of a tmosphereto-ecosystem linkage (Fig. 1) is to apply output f rom a general circulation model (GCM) through a mesoscale a tmospher ic model to an ecosystem model (Kittel and Coughenour , 1988). Such linkage permits an evaluation of regional meteorological effects on biological systems due to GCM-simula ted changes, such as those due to greenhouse Correspondence to: R.A. Pielke, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA. 0304-3800/93/$06.00 © 1993 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. All rights reserved 6 R.A. PIELKE ET AL.