Again, Jason set up his met towers and I characterized the vegetation biomass, community composition and structure. Modeling Vegetation data from this field work will be used to develop a Dynamic Vegetation Model. The proposed DVM will build off TEM, a process-based model that estimates the spatial and temporal distribution of carbon and nitrogen pools and fluxes in plant functional types. TEM is a process based ecosystem simulation model that uses spatially referenced information on climate, elevation, soils and vegetation to make monthly estimates of important C and N fluxes and pool sizes. In TEM, C enters the vegetation pool as gross primary production and transfers to the atmosphere as plant respiration or to the soil pool in litter production.
Carbon leaves the soil as heterotrophic respiration.
The C cycle in TEM is closely coupled to the N cycle. Nitrogen enters or leaves the ecosystem through the inorganic N pool. Nitrogen in the vegetation is found either in the structural or the labile pool. As is the case for carbon, N is transferred from the vegetation to the soil pool in litter production. Net N mineralization accounts for the N exchange between the organic and inorganic pools.