B41B-0450
Simulation and verification for the expansion of the wildfire in the boreal forest
1. Background Frequent occurrence of wildland fires in boreal area is considered as one of major resources of greenhouse gases: by not only biomass burning but also continuing to melt the frozen soil and accelerating the resolution of the peat etc. For example, there area lot of wildland fires in Alaska. Now, the satellites of NOAA and Terra/Aqua are watching the earth and the fires are detected easily. Of course the fire detection is very important, but the influence on inhabitants is more important. Our purpose is to make the numerical simulation of the wildland fire spread in the large area. We think this is very useful to help fire fighting and reduction for the bad effects on the inhabitants and global environment such as the replace of CO2. 2. Numerical Wildfire Spread Simulation There are many type of the numerical simulation of wildfire spread. In our simulation, the wildfire velocity is based on the Rhothermel equation and other parts are made of the cell automata. The area of the wildfire is the uniform vegetation consisted of the boreal forest (Picea mariana) then the fuel factor is also uniform, we think. The origin point and the real spread of the Boundary Fire are observed by Alaska Fire Service. In this study, the comparison of the all field and the simulation is only about this fire. 3. Stop Line of the Forest Fire Spread If the forest fire simulation continue for many steps, all the forest in the simulation area is burned out because the stop lines have not been considered yet. Now we think about the stop lines with the topology and the wind direction. (Of course the rain is the best way to distinguish the forest fire. But that is neglected.) It has been proven that as a tendency in the forest fire in a past, the fire does not spread in the place like the following, and that the burn stops: (1) Windward side and down slope (2) Lee side We analyzed the coupling of them. The best parameter of the burn stop probability is the proportion of the wind speed. The proportion constant is calculated by the generic algorism. 4. Weather Condition Weather condition is very important for the wildland fire spread. When wind speed is strong, wildland fire spreads very fast, and sometimes fire leaps across a road and even a river. Usually, the weather condition was considered as the observation point data in the town near the fire. But it is not enough because the area is sometimes far away and the observation interval is loose. In our study, the mesoscale weather simulation model (MM5) is taken in the wildfire spread simulation. 5. The Simulation Results We are now validating our numerical simulation of the wildland fire. Boundary Fire is the bigger forest fire near Fairbanks, Alaska in 2004. We show the examples of the results in the poster. 6. Conclusion We constructed the numerical simulation model of wildfire spread in boreal forest. It was made of the cellular automata. The result of simulation was verified by the real data of the Boundary Fire near Fairbanks in 2004 and it is very good re-create except for fire leaps.
B41B-0451
Quantifying Changes in Ecosystem Goods and Services From Land-use Change in the Amazon Basin
The Amazon basin delivers a wide array of ecosystem goods and services to recipients at local, regional and global scales. As an increasing amount of land is converted from natural vegetation to cropland, pasture, biofuel and timber production, the social, economics and biophysical changes have yet to be fully quantified across. There are inherent trade-offs of these goods and services with changes in land-use that occur across scales. Here, we begin to calculate the impact of land-use changes for commodity production across the Amazon and identify user groups and their changing levels of ecosystem services. Future synthesis work will integrate studies completed under the auspices of the Large Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA) with a next- generation biosphere model, similar to IBIS. Ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, water quality / quantity, climate regulation and health will be considered. This work aims to better the understanding of the relationship between the biophysical environment and the sociosphere by using economic and statistical data on commodity production and trade to deliver spatially explicit estimates of the changes in ecosystem goods and services across the Amazon basin.
B41B-0452
Wind farms and weather: the predictability of wind farm-induced changes in the downstream atmosphere.
The installed wind power capacity worldwide has now exceeded 80 Gigawatts, 12 Gigawatts of which is located in the United States. The size of this capacity is growing at an accelerating rate due to an increasingly reasonable delivery price compared to other energy sources, and improvements in turbine technologies. In light of this growth, we have studied the potential impact that deliberate management of a large wind farm has on both regional climatology and the ability to modify a particular storm's strength and track. We illuminate the extent to which any such changes can be made predictably within a reasonable forecast timeframe. We also distinguish remote anomalies arising from spectral wave generation within the model during the first few time steps from significant anomalies caused by gravity wave propagation away from the wind farm site. Management of a wind farm would be performed in the field by altering the farm's effective roughness length through adjustment of the attitude of the turbine blades with respect to the wind direction. We will also present results that elucidate the dependence of a storm's downstream strength upon both the timing and magnitude of the surface roughness change. This project follows work by Kirk- Davidoff and Keith (2007) that demonstrated a significant extended regional effect on climatology through an alteration of surface roughness over a large area.
B41B-0453
Mind the Gap: How do climate and agricultural management explain the "yield gap" of croplands around the world?
At present, cultivated lands extend across approximately fifteen million square kilometers of the Earth's surface, making it one of the most dominant land cover types. The management practices used on these lands have become increasingly intensified, requiring large inputs of fertilizers and water, in addition to mechanization and biotechnology. These intensified practices have had implications for ecosystem goods and services ranging from water quality and availability to carbon sequestration. However, the billions of additional people that are projected to inhabit the planet in the twenty-first century will require further outputs from our global agricultural system. Given our food system's already expansive and intensive state, it is important to consider where the additional yields might come from and what additional management inputs this might require. In this study, we compare yields both within crop types and within regions of similar climate to determine where yield gaps exist. We do so using recently created, five-minute datasets of the area harvested and yield of 175 different crop types for the year 2000. We also explore the links of these yield gaps to global patterns of management. For example, we consider the ways in which management practices such as irrigation and fire are influencing yields around the world - analyses that can help critically evaluate the level of management currently employed and help imagine what management might be necessary to achieve higher yields in the future. These data will be needed in the next generation of Earth System models, in order to better represent the practices of agricultural land use in more realistic ways, thereby improving our understanding of land use / land cover change on the global carbon and water cycles, and the climate system.
B41B-0454
An assessment of the biophysical consequences of land use change and the implications for climate policy analysis
Land use change (LUC) can impact global climate through several processes in addition to changing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations. Some contend that the biophysical effects of LUC can be as important as the direct effect on GHG emissions, and argue that the biophysical effects of LUC must be included in climate policy decisions. However, much uncertainty remains regarding the conditions under which these biophysical effects have significant impact on the global climate. We calculated a first order assessment of the magnitude and relative uncertainty for each of the processes by which LUC impacts global climate. Results from available, published model experiments on the climatic impacts of LUC were converted to a single common metric of radiative forcing, focusing on the biophysical effects of LUC and how such effects vary with latitude. We found that, under some conditions, the biophysical effects of LUC can alter the global climate more than GHG fluxes. The climatic effects of LUC vary significantly in magnitude by latitude, with biophysical processes having little net effect in the tropics but large effects in the high latitudes. Are these biophysical processes important to consider in climate analysis over the next century? We investigated the importance of these processes over projected baseline land use and under climate policy scenarios that include large amounts of biological carbon sequestration and/or bioenergy production. The importance of biophysical processes is highly dependent on the magnitude and spatial distribution of future land use. We found that current scenarios with large amounts of bioenergy from timber and/or afforestation in temperate and boreal latitudes likely will result in significantly higher warming than the temperature target. This research illustrates the importance of including the biophysical impacts of LUC and spatially explicit land use projections for robust climate policy analyses. Climate projections that include only aggregate GHG fluxes from LUC are vulnerable to significant miscalculations, on the order of up to 1K in global mean surface temperature.
B41B-0455
Carbon Storage in Urban Areas in the USA
It is widely accepted that human settlements occupy a small proportion of the landmass and therefore play a relatively small role in the dynamics of the global carbon cycle. Most modeling studies focusing on the land carbon cycle use models of varying complexity to estimate carbon fluxes through forests, grasses, and croplands, but completely omit urban areas from their scope. Here, we estimate carbon storage in urban areas within the United States, defined to encompass a range of observed settlement densities, and its changes from 1950 to 2000. We show that this storage is not negligible and has been continuously increasing. We include natural- and human-related components of urban areas in our estimates. The natural component includes carbon storage in urban soil and vegetation. The human related component encompasses carbon stored long term in buildings, furniture, cars, and waste. The study suggests that urban areas should receive continued attention in efforts to accurately account for carbon uptake and storage in terrestrial systems.
B41B-0456
Climate Impacts of Potential Vegetation versus Current Day MODIS Land Cover in the Community Climate System Model (CCSM)
Numerous studies have used General Circulation Models to investigate the possible climate impacts that human development has had through transforming the world from natural ecosystems to one dominated by cultivation, grazing, pastures and urban landscapes. In recent climate sensitivity studies we have found that the global representation of vegetation and soils, as well as the surface hydrology in the Community Land Model (CLM) has large impacts on the climate simulated in the Community Climate System Model (CCSM). Therefore to investigate the climate impacts of land cover change in CCSM we have developed new potential vegetation land surface parameters for CLM that are consistent with our current day MODIS land surface parameters. The new parameters use the potential vegetation biome mapping of Ramankutty and Foley, (1999), with the spatial heterogeneity and temporal phenology of plant functional types (PFTs) extrapolated from the MODIS parameters of current day remnant natural biomes. The potential vegetation parameters replace land use, predominantly cropping, with natural tree, shrub and grass PFTs, resulting in substantially higher leaf area index (LAI) and stem area index (SAI) over much of the world. The climate impacts of the potential vegetation parameters are assessed through climate sensitivity studies with the CCSM compared to the climate simulated with the current day MODIS parameters. The main impact of the potential vegetation on the climate simulated in CCSM is an overall cooling from increased latent heat flux, with mixed impacts from albedo changes. This is consistent with previous GCM studies where surface hydrology dominates the forcing from land cover change, but is opposite to studies where the surface albedo is the dominate change. The strong dominance of surface hydrology in changes with the potential vegetation parameters underscores the importance of providing realistic hydrology and land cover in CCSM sensitivity experiments. http://cires.colorado.edu/science/groups/chase/people/lawrence/
B41B-0457
Assessing Watershed Sensitivity to Minimize Peak Flow Modification due to Logging After Forest Disturbance
Forest cover is a key modifier of a watershed's peak flow regime. Where forest cover is reduced due to logging or natural disturbances such as fire and insect/disease outbreaks, peak flows are, in most cases, increased. Based on GIS data available for the entire province of British Columbia (BC), Canada, with its diverse climatic regimes, land cover and hydrologic processes, we developed a methodology that classifies the sensitivity of watersheds to peak flow modification based on input characteristics and hydrological runoff generation processes. The input model component uses climatic data to derive mean annual snowmelt and maximum rainfall rates for BC for each month at a 400m grid resolution. It calculates the time of occurrence of peak flow and the precipitation regime of a watershed: snowmelt-dominated, rainfall-dominated, and transitional. This allows mapping peak flow generating input for each 3rd order watershed in BC. The runoff generation model component delineates dominant peak flow producing hydrologic processes at the watershed level: channel interception, Hortonian Overland Flow, Saturation Overland Flow and Shallow Subsurface Flow. This delineation is based on a combination of factors such as land cover, relief, slope, aspect, drainage density, drainage pattern, and hillslope morphology. The model components are validated against provincial hydro-climatic data sets. Derived maps at 25m resolution are then used to classify the watershed into different peak flow regimes to derive a sensitivity rating for different disturbance scenarios. This rating is then incorporated into a framework to assess risks to infrastructure, drinking water, and fish habitat and to minimize peak flow modification by optimizing timing, extend and location of logging in watersheds. http://faculty.forestry.ubc.ca/weiler/
B41B-0458
The Impact of Land Cover and Land Use Changes on Atmosphere-Biosphere Exchanges and Atmospheric Chemistry
One of the challenging foci of global atmospheric chemistry research is how the atmospheric oxidizing (or cleansing) capacity, which also controls the lifetime of greenhouse gases such as methane, will change in response to climate- and land cover and land use changes. This is also motivated by anticipated global land cover and land use scenarios, which indicate that the terrestrial biosphere is expected to be affected significantly by anthropogenic activities, e.g., tropical deforestation. Analysis with a single-column chemistry-climate model has indicated that short-term (days) changes in the atmospheric oxidizing capacity due to Amazonian deforestation not only depend on changes in surface trace gas exchanges. There are also significant changes in vertical convective and turbulent transport and the hydrological cycle due to changes in surface energy and water exchanges. We apply the global chemistry-climate model ECHAM5/MESSy to present an analysis of the long-term impact of land-cover and land-use changes on surface exchanges and global atmospheric chemistry. The land cover and land use change scenarios are taken from the Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment (IMAGE). In addition to changes in surface trace gas exchanges associated with land use changes, we include changes in micro- and boundary layer meteorology and hydrology and elaborate on the relative importance of land use changes compared to anticipated increases in anthropogenic emissions for atmospheric chemistry.
B41B-0459
High Resolution Regional Climate Modeling of the Irrigation Cooling Effect in California
Recent research on the impact of irrigation on climate using regional climate models (RCMs) has revealed the presence of an irrigation cooling effect (ICE). By introducing large amounts of water to the land surface via irrigation there is a substantial decrease in daytime surface air temperatures during the dry season in California. Previous studies of the ICE in California utilized RCMs with horizontal resolution 30 km x 30 km. We have completed new experiments at 10 km x 10 km resolution for an 11-year time period from January 1 1979 to January 1 1990. The higher resolution allows for an improved representation of topography, which plays an important role in influencing the regional and local climate of California. An initial comparison of the 30 km and 10 km experiments reveals interesting similarities and differences in surface air temperature, humidity, and the surface energy budget. We also examined the changes in the winds due to irrigation between the 30 km and 10 km experiments. The cooling induced by irrigation leads to an increase in surface air pressure over the irrigated areas in California's Central Valley, which leads to a decrease in near surface onshore flow during the dry season. This onshore flow plays an important role for many crops, particularly wine grapes. By comparing the 30 km and 10 km experiments we are able to better quantify the uncertainty of the magnitude of changes in onshore flow.
B41B-0460
Landuse Dynamics in a Small Watershed of the Semi-arid Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe has experienced a controversial land reform program with physical, political and socio-economical consequences for the country and the entire southern African region. Here, land use decision making is related to water. A study has been undertaken in Insiza River watershed (3401 km 2), located within the semi-arid southern part of Zimbabwe. The Insiza River is a tributary of Mzingwane River, which drains into the transboundary Limpopo River, contributing around 9 % of the unit runoff of the latter river. The Insiza watershed is divided into two main hydrological zones, the Upper Insiza and the Lower Insiza. Mean Annual Runoff of the two hydrological zones is 50 mm and 38 mm respectively. Through a supervised classification of satellite images, the landuse dynamics was assessed from Landsat images acquired in April 1991 and April 2000. Five signature files, bare ground, water bodies, mixed impacted land, good natural vegetation and croplands were used to define the Insiza watershed land use set up while processing Landsat images with IDRISI. For the decade considered, the major changes occurred within mixed impacted lands that were converted into croplands. This conversion was observed on 14% of the total area of the Insiza watershed. Moreover there was a decrease in water bodies (from 1.3% to 0.89%), bare ground (from 1.2% to 0.9%) and in natural good vegetation (from 50.99% to 50.48%) land types. These changes were observed in the Upper Insiza, where the commercial farms were located. However, the decrease in natural good vegetation and the conversion of mixed impacted lands into fields took place mainly in the communal lands.
B41B-0461
Global and Regional Potential for Biofuels From Residue and Waste
As co-products, agricultural and forestry residues as well as municipal solid waste (MSW) represent potential low cost lignocellulosic biomass feedstocks for the production of second generation biofuels. For agriculture, the maximum supply is a function of crop-specific attributes (harvest index and energy content of residue) and total crop production (yield and total harvested area). For forestry, two potential residue streams are considered: residue left from timber harvesting (tree tops and branches), and residue from mills (wood scraps and sawdust). The harvest index, milling efficiencies, and energy content of wood are used to estimate the total potential supply of forestry residues. MSW is predicted as a function of GDP and the proportional waste composition indicative of various regions. Limiting factors for supply of biomass feedstock from these sources include agricultural and forest productivity, residue required to prevent soil erosion and maintain soil nutrients, and cost of aggregation and transport. Using the ObjECTS MiniCAM Integrated Assessment Model, the global role of residue biomass as a feedstock for biofuels is modeled for the next century under different climate policy scenarios.
B41B-0462
An Assessment of Bio-Energy Crops Use in Illinois
Growing concern about climate change and energy security has led to increasing interest in developing domestically available renewable energy sources for meeting the electricity, heating and fuel needs in the United States. Illinois has a significant potential to grow perennial grasses that can provide bio-energy. Two perennial grasses, Switchgrass and Miscanthus, have been identified as among the best choices for low input bio-energy production in the US and Europe. The purpose of this talk is two fold. First, we will examine the optimal areas in Illinois to locate perennial grasses as feedstocks. These areas will be determined based on biophysical conditions (such as heterogeneity in soil quality and climatic factors) and costs of production and costs of land that differ across locations. Second, we will determine the CO2 mitigation benefits to be provided by bioenergy crops, both in the form of soil carbon sequestration and displacement of carbon emissions from gasoline. This analysis will be undertaken using detailed GIS data on soil quality, climate and land use for 0.1deg by 0.1deg grid cells in Illinois. This data will be used together with the Integrated Science Assessment Model (ISAM), a terrestrial ecosystem model, to estimate the yields of Switchgrass and Miscanthus as well as their potential to sequester carbon in the soil. Yield for row crops will be based on historical data and will be used to determine the opportunity cost of converting land currently under corn and soybean production to perennial grasses. Costs of production for the alternative crops here include expenses incurred by farmers on fertilizer inputs, machinery, harvesting and transportation and will be used to determine the profitability of alternative land uses in each grid cell. The framework developed here will be used to examine the optimal locations to grow bio-energy crops to achieve various carbon mitigation targets cost-effectively.
B41B-0463
Assessing the Effects of Corn-Based Ethanol Production on Stream Water Quality
Corn grain-based ethanol production nearly doubled over the past five years in response to energy security concerns and the use of ethanol as a gasoline additive. Corn prices show similar increases with much of the rise occurring in more recent years. Farmers responded by planting 93 million acres of corn in 2007, a 19 percent increase over 2006, with most of the new acreage converted from lands in soybeans and cotton. The projected doubling of corn-based ethanol production by 2016 is expected to exert a continued demand for increased corn acreage and production. Both the recent and projected increases in corn production have raised concerns about the degradation of stream water quality; these include the water-quality effects of possible conversions of Conservation Reserve Program lands of which 16 million enrolled acres are slated to expire in 2007. However, no studies of the potential water-quality impacts have been conducted to date. Corn-based agriculture is currently recognized as a major source of nitrogen to Midwestern streams and the northern Gulf of Mexico where increased nitrogen has contributed to coastal eutrophication over the last several decades. Phosphorus from agricultural sources, including corn-based crops, is also known to impair the quality of inland streams and rivers. We use the spatially explicit water-quality model SPARROW (Spatially Referenced Regression on Watershed Attributes) to simulate the potential effects of recent and projected ethanol-related corn production on stream nutrient loads and coastal nutrient delivery. We simulate mean-annual total nitrogen and phosphorus loads in major streams of the conterminous United States, based on the use of a previously estimated national model. The model accounts for major sources and inputs of nutrients to watersheds (e.g., agricultural, atmospheric deposition, human wastes); these are mediated in the model by the effects of climate, topography, soils, and aquatic attenuation processes on transport. In the model simulations, we use county data on the annual corn production and acreage, and facility information on ethanol production to estimate ethanol- related changes in nutrient loads from 2002 to 2007. The simulated changes in stream nutrient loads from 2007 to 2016 are based on several scenarios developed from available information that describes projected changes in corn prices and the associated changes in corn acreage and production required to satisfy increased ethanol production. We summarize the magnitude and geography of the simulated changes in stream nutrients and coastal deliveries from 2002 to 2016, with attention to evaluating the changes in nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations in streams in relation to current nutrient criteria.
B41B-0464
United States Land Cover Land Use Change, Albedo and Surface Radiative Forcing 1973 to 2000
This research responds to the recent recommendations made by the U.S. National Research Council for regional forcing studies to better understand climatic responses to land cover land use change. Surface albedo affects the earth's radiative energy balance, by controlling how much incoming solar radiation is absorbed and reflected. It is well established that Land Cover Land Use (LCLU) change results in changes in the surface albedo which has a radiative forcing effect, however, to date, studies have been limited due to data uncertainties. New spatially explicit satellite derived LCLU change and albedo data for the conterminous U.S. are used to study the impact of LCLU change from 1973 to 2000 on surface albedo and radiative forcing. The methodology and preliminary results for 42% of the U.S. processed to date are presented as spatially explicit maps and summary statistics. The results indicate a negative (cooling) radiative forcing effect due to U.S. LCLU change over the last three decades. Data used include USGS Landsat based decadal land cover maps of the conterminous U.S. located using a stratified sampling methodology across 84 ecoregions, mean 2000-2002 MODIS broadband albedo values extracted in each ecoregion for the 10 mapped LCLU classes, and monthly mean surface incoming solar radiation from the recent European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecast 40 year Reanalysis (ERA40) product.
B41B-0465
Carbon Fluxes From Land-Use Change and Forestry: A Multi-Model Study
The impact of land-use change and land management on global carbon fluxes is assessed using a variety of models of different types with different land cover change maps. Annual carbon fluxes are disaggregated into different land-use change processes and carbon pools in separate geographical regions. Biogeochemical modeling studies estimate the impacts of CO2 fertilization and climate change in addition to land use change but did not include some activities which are considered in book-keeping approaches. We perform a detailed analysis for USA. The USA is chosen because of the disparity between the detailed UNFCCC estimates and the model-based estimates. Major differences between different data sets are found in the litter and soil organic matter components for the USA, although the differences are much smaller than those in the tropics. Combining the book-keeping modeling results with the process-based biogeochemical modeling estimates yields a consensus of bottom-up and top-down estimates. Our results indicate that extra-tropical land regions are net weak sink of carbon and the tropics are net small source in the 1990s.
B41B-0466
Towards Understanding Environmental/Health Risks of Renewable Diesel (Biodiesel, Non- ester Diesel) in California
Alternative fuels for internal combustion engines offer considerable benefits as they provide so-called "sustainable" alternatives to mined fossil fuels, reduce the nation's dependence on imported petroleum, and have the potential to reduce harmful pollutants and exhaust emissions. This has been long recognized: the first appearance and demonstration of an oil based diesel fuel was at the Paris Exhibition in 1900. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 required 75 percent of new federal/state vehicles to accomodate alternative fuels. Modern concerns and overpopulation have dramatically raised the current interest. However, since these are relatively new fuels, the risks and uncertainties associated with environmental and human health effects are as yet unaddressed. As required by Section 43830.8 California Health and Safety Code before adopting new fuel specifications the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is required to prepare a relative "multimedia" evaluation of new fuels, not only with regard to engine performance and emission requirements but also with consideration of health and environmental criteria involving airborne toxics and associated health risks, ozone formation potential, hazardous waste generation and management and surface and groundwater contamination resulting from production, distribution, and use. The assessment is relative to a standard reference fuel. As a preliminary to multimedia risk assessment of biodiesel, we report here on: a brief history of biodiesel; production of biodiesel, fuel quality, and feedstocks used; key properties of six different feedstocks for possible large scale biodiesel production; and California's production challenges. Priority characteristics that pertain to environmental fate and transport and human health are described. The longer-term objective of this study is an overall relative examination of the environmental and health effects of biodiesel within the context of a multimedia assessment.
B41B-0467
Combining Regional Climate Modelling and Dynamic Ecosystem Modelling to Investigate Climate Changes and Their Impacts over Northern Europe
Coupled processes and mechanisms linking atmospheric and terrestrial ecosystem dynamics play an important role in climate change, since interacting feedbacks have the potential both to amplify and dampen the magnitude of change. Earth System Models in which a GCM is coupled to a model of terrestrial biogeochemistry and land surface dynamics and applied at the global scale have been developed and used to demonstrate that changes in climate forcing can lead to climate-induced biome shifts that may significantly exacerbate the forcing - a positive feedback. Climate scenarios for the coming century point towards a northward expansion of boreal forests into tundra and partial deforestation in the Tropics, both of which are likely to play an important role in global climate change. The primary mechanisms for this are reduced albedo at high latitudes and reduced hydrological cycling in the tropics. While the feedbacks have been described at continental to global scales using global models, the underlying processes are local to regional in character, and are also likely to play an important role in regional climate change. To our knowledge no study has yet investigated the full nature and scope of biospheric feedbacks on climate at the regional scale using dynamic models run at high resolution. In this presentation we describe the development of a regional 'Earth System' model, RCA3-GUESS, coupling a regional climate model, RCA3 (Kjellström et al., 2005), with a process-based model of vegetation dynamics and ecosystem biogeochemistry, LPJ-GUESS (Smith et al., 2001). We go on to describe the application of the model to investigate feedbacks of vegetation changes on the climate of Europe under an emissions scenario for the coming century. In a control simulation for 1961-1990 over Europe with climate boundary conditions from the ERA40 reanalysis dataset, the model reproduced observed temperature and rainfall distributions as well as regional patterns in vegetation structure, composition and CO2 exchange. Coupled interannual variability in summer temperature, soil water and leaf area index was simulated for dry-climate areas like the east Mediterranean.
B41B-0468
Can We Outlive Our Way of Life?
In this presentation I outline the rational, science-based arguments that question current wisdom of replacing fossil plant fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) with fresh plant agrofuels. This 1:1 replacement is absolutely impossible for more than a few years, because of the ways the planet Earth works and maintains life. After these few years, the denuded Earth will be a different planet, hostile to human life. I argue that with the current set of objective constraints a continuous stable solution to human life cannot exist in the near-future, unless we all rapidly implement much more limited ways of using the Earth's resources, while reducing the global populations of cars, trucks, livestock and, eventually, also humans. To avoid economic and ecological disasters, I recommend to decrease all automotive fuel use in the EU by up to 6 percent per year in 8 years, while switching to the increasingly rechargeable hybrid and all-electric cars, progressively driven by photovoltaic cells. The actual schedule of the rate of decrease should also depend on the exigencies of greenhouse gas abatement. The photovoltaic cell-battery-electric motor system is 100 to 600 times more efficient than major agrofuel systems.