Modeling Perennial Bioenergy Crops in the E3SM Land Model (ELMv2)

Perennial bioenergy crops are increasingly important for the production of ethanol and other renewable fuels, as part an agricultural system that alters climate through its impact on biogeophysical biogeochemical properties terrestrial ecosystem. Few Earth System Models (ESMs) represent such crops, however. In this study, we expand Energy Exascale Land Model to include perennial with a high potential mitigating change. We focus high-productivity miscanthus switchgrass, estimating various parameters associated their different growth stages performing global sensitivity analysis identify optimize these parameters. The identifies five phenology, carbon/nitrogen allocation, stomatal conductance, maintenance respiration most sensitive carbon energy fluxes. calibrated validated model against observations found closely captures observed seasonality magnitude represents latent heat flux fairly well, but sensible is not well captured. Finally, leaf area index (LAI) harvest amount modeled LAI captured seasonality, although underestimates amount. This work provides foundation future ESM analyses interactions between carbon, water, dynamics in larger system, sets stage studying biofuel expansion systems.