Assimilation of Remotely-Sensed Leaf Area Index into a Dynamic Vegetation Model for Gross Primary Productivity Estimation

Quantitative estimation of the magnitude and variability of gross primary productivity (GPP) is required to study the carbon cycle of the terrestrial ecosystem. Using ecosystem models and remotely-sensed data is a practical method for accurately estimating GPP. This study presents a method for assimilating high-quality leaf area index (LAI) products retrieved from satellite data into a process-oriented Lund-Potsdam-Jena dynamic global vegetation model (LPJ-DGVM) to acquire accurate GPP. The assimilation methods, including the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) and a proper orthogonal decomposition (POD)-based ensemble four-dimensional (4D) variational assimilation method (PODEn4DVar), incorporate information provided by observations into the model to achieve a better agreement between the model-estimated and observed GPP. The LPJ-POD scheme performs better with a correlation coefficient of r = 0.923 and RMSD of 32.676 gC/m2/month compared with the LPJ-EnKF scheme (r = 0.887, RMSD = 38.531 gC/m2/month) and with no data assimilation (r = 0.840, RMSD = 45.410 gC/m2/month). Applying the PODEn4DVar method into LPJ-DGVM for simulating GPP in China shows that the annual amount of GPP in China varied between 5.92 PgC and 6.67 PgC during 2003–2012 with an annual mean of 6.35 PgC/yr. This study demonstrates that integrating remotely-sensed data with dynamic global vegetation models through data assimilation methods has potential in optimizing the simulation and that the LPJ-POD scheme shows better performance in improving GPP estimates, which can provide a favorable way for accurately estimating dynamics of ecosystems.