Impact assessment of remotely sensed soil moisture on ecosystem carbon fluxes across Europe

While remote sensing stands alone in being able to provide spatially explicit datasets at regional to global scales, it has so far found only few applications in reporting and verifying ecosystem carbon fluxes within the context of the Kyoto Protocol. One of the problems is that new remote sensing datasets can only be used with new or adapted models and data assimilation schemes. In this study remotely sensed soil moisture data derived from ERS scatterometer measurements are used for the first time to model the carbon balance of Europe. By comparing the model results obtained with and without the use of the remotely sensed soil moisture data, the strong impact of soil moisture on the European carbon balance is demonstrated. For many parts of Europe, modeled net ecosystem productivity decreases when soil moisture is taken into account. A comparison with anthropogenic carbon emissions demonstrates that this effect is quite strong. Several European countries shift from being a carbon sink into a carbon source.

[1]  Y. Kerr,et al.  Operational readiness of microwave remote sensing of soil moisture for hydrologic applications , 2007 .

[2]  R. Lucas,et al.  A review of remote sensing technology in support of the Kyoto Protocol , 2003 .

[3]  Frank Veroustraete,et al.  Carbon mass fluxes of forests in Belgium determined with low resolution optical sensors , 2004 .

[4]  Gérard Dedieu,et al.  Monitoring seasonal and interannual variations of gross primary productivity, net primary productivity and net ecosystem productivity using a diagnostic model and remotely‐sensed data , 1995 .

[5]  W. Verstraeten,et al.  Soil moisture retrieval using thermal inertia, determined with visible and thermal spaceborne data, validated for European forests , 2006 .

[6]  P. Ciais,et al.  The carbon budget of terrestrial ecosystems at country-scale – a European case study , 2004 .

[7]  R. Myneni,et al.  On the relationship between FAPAR and NDVI , 1994 .

[8]  The role of earth observation in the good practice guidance for reporting land use, land-use change and forestry activities as specified by the Kyoto Protocol , 2005 .

[9]  Klaus Scipal,et al.  Validation of ERS scatterometer‐derived soil moisture data in the central part of the Duero Basin, Spain , 2005 .

[10]  W. Wagner,et al.  Evaluation of the agreement between the first global remotely sensed soil moisture data with model and precipitation data , 2003 .

[11]  F. Veroustraete,et al.  Estimation of carbon mass fluxes over Europe using the C-Fix model and Euroflux data , 2002 .

[12]  Wolfgang Wagner,et al.  Evaluation of ERS scatterometer soil moisture products over a half‐degree region in southwestern France , 2006 .

[13]  D. Victor,et al.  Verification: The gorilla in the struggle to slow global warming , 2001 .

[14]  P. Ciais,et al.  Europe-wide reduction in primary productivity caused by the heat and drought in 2003 , 2005, Nature.

[15]  A. Belward,et al.  GLC2000: a new approach to global land cover mapping from Earth observation data , 2005 .

[16]  John Grace,et al.  Respiration in the balance , 2000, Nature.

[17]  Pete Smith,et al.  Europe's Terrestrial Biosphere Absorbs 7 to 12% of European Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions , 2003, Science.

[18]  Christopher B. Field,et al.  The Terrestrial Carbon Cycle: Implications for the Kyoto Protocol , 1998, Science.

[19]  Ü. Rannik,et al.  Respiration as the main determinant of carbon balance in European forests , 2000, Nature.

[20]  W. Wagner,et al.  A Method for Estimating Soil Moisture from ERS Scatterometer and Soil Data , 1999 .