Open Access Publication of the Month – Olga Dombrowski (IBG-3) et al.
15 August 2022
To encourage us all to broaden our horizons, each month the Central Library selects one open access publication from the JuSER publications portal to be featured in the newsletter of Forschungszentrum Jülich.
In the open access publication of the month, Olga Dombrowski, Cosimo Brogi, Harrie-Jan Hendricks Franssen, and Heye Bogena from the Institute of Bio- and Geosciences – Agrosphere (IBG-3) in collaboration with Damiano Zanotelli from the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano present a new model development that includes deciduous fruit orchards in the Community Land Model version 5 (CLM5), a land surface model that looks at the interaction between terrestrial ecosystems and the climate across different scales.
The study addresses the need to improve the representation of perennial agriculture, such as fruit orchards, in land surface models. The inclusion of such systems is important to understanding their role in storing carbon in the soil, and to studying how their food production and water requirements may be affected by climate change. CLM5-FruitTree was thus developed to describe the seasonal growth cycle, biomass distribution, and typical management practices in orchards. The development was calibrated and tested using a variety of measurements collected in an apple orchard in Northern Italy.
The model performed well in predicting the growth cycle, average yield, and the exchange of carbon, energy, and water in the orchard. The authors also discuss how the results were affected by simplifications in the representation of the orchard structure as well as model weaknesses in accurately describing complex biological and physical processes, such as respiration and energy partitioning. Overall, the representation of perennial agriculture in the model was improved and CLM5-FruitTree can be applied on different scales to study land surface processes in fruit orchards.
The open access publication entitled “CLM5-FruitTree: a new sub-model for deciduous fruit trees in the Community Land Model (CLM5)” was published in the journal Geoscientific Model Development.
JuSER publications portal – CLM5-FruitTree: a new sub-model for deciduous fruit trees in the Community Land Model (CLM5)
Internet – Institute of Bio- and Geosciences – Agrosphere (IBG-3