HR: 0800h
AN: B31A-03    [Abstracts]
TI: Application of BIOME-BGC to Managed Forest Ecosystems in Europe
AU: * Pietsch, S A
EM: Stephan.Pietsch@boku.ac.at
AF: Institute of Forest Growth Research, Peter-Jordan-Strasse 82, Vienna, A-1190, Austria
AU: Petritsch, R
EM: Richard.Petritsch@boku.ac.at
AU: Hasenauer, H
EM: Hubert.Hasenauer@boku.ac.at
AB: European forests have been severely modified by humans resulting in a reduction of forest covered land area, a change in tree species distribution and the deterioration of forest soils. One option to assess forest management impacts on the cycling of carbon, nitrogen and water is the use of BGC-Models. Such models are considered as diagnostic tools for studying sustainability of forest ecosystems and have been used for climate change impact studies on forest growth and carbon sequestration issues. In our efforts to develop an appropriate diagnostic tool to assess the dynamics of carbon, nitrogen, water and energy flux for sustainable forest ecosystem management and climate change studies, we have selected BIOME-BGC. The main reason was that the general model structure is flexible enough to integrate large scale, regional as well as forest stand level information. During the last years we worked on the following extensions: (1) Tested and extended algorithms to interpolate daily climate input data as they are needed to run the model for any location within the country; (2) We developed a set of species specific parameters for all major tree species in Central Europe: Norway spruce (two variants highland and lowlands), Scots pine, Stone pine, larch, common beech and oak forests. These parameters sets are important since in BIOME-BGC vegetation is distinguished in biomes or plant functional types but the impacts of forest management (e.g. changes in stand density) may differ substantially among the tree species assigned to a single biome. (3) We extended the model to cover the full variation ranging from conditions including temperature extremes at the timberline to periodic ground water access or flooding in lowlands. (4) We adapted the spinup procedure to ensure unbiased predictions on forest status in the absence of past and present management impacts. (5) Explicitly addressed the effects of past and present forest management as they may differ by species and silvicultural practice. (6) We assess climate change impacts on managed forests and discuss the impacts of our results on forest management practices.
DE: 0414 Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling (0412, 0793, 1615, 4805, 4912)
DE: 0428 Carbon cycling (4806)
DE: 0495 Water/energy interactions (1878)
DE: 1630 Impacts of global change (1225)
DE: 1631 Land/atmosphere interactions (1218, 1843, 3322)
SC: Biogeosciences [B]
MN: 2007 Joint Assembly