Modelling net primary productivity of terrestrial ecosystems in East Asia based on an improved CASA ecosystem model

Abstract

By using a land cover map, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data sets, monthly meteorological data and observed net primary productivity (NPP) data, we have improved the method of estimating light use efficiency (LUE) for different biomes and soil moisture coefficients in the Carnegie–Ames–Stanford Approach (CASA) ecosystem model. Based on this improved model we produced an annual NPP map (in 1999) for the East Asia region located at 10–70° N, 70–170° E (about 19.66% of the terrestrial surface of the Earth). The results show that the mean NPP for the study area in 1999 was 374.12 g carbon (C) m⁻² year⁻¹ and the total NPP was 1.096 × 10¹⁴ kg C year⁻¹, making up 17.51–18.39% of the global NPP. Comparison between the estimated NPP obtained from this improved CASA ecosystem model and the observed NPP obtained from two NPP databases indicates that the estimated NPP is close to the observed NPP, with an average error of 5.15% for the study region. We used two different land cover maps of China to drive the improved CASA model by keeping other inputs unchanged to determine how the classification accuracy of the land cover map affects the estimated NPP, and the results indicate that an accurate land cover map is important for obtaining an accurate and reliable estimate of NPP for some regions, especially for a particular biome.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Programmes of National Natural Science Foundation of China (40801211), the National Science Fund Project for Distinguished Young Scholars of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 40425008) and the Project of State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resources Ecology (070106). We thank the referees and editors whose comments have improved the quality of the manuscript.