Continental Scale Validation of a Dynamic Forest Model with Remotely Sensed Satellite Imagery

The Russian boreal forest is one of the largest terrestrial biomes on the planet and its behavior has significant consequences for global and regional climate, the Russian economy, and the global carbon cycle. In order to make projections about the future of Russian forests, a fine-scale dynamic forest model FAREAST was run and tested throughout the country under a variety of climate and disturbance scenarios. To validate this model output, remotely sensed data derived from satellite imagery was used as a comparison with the results of FAREAST. Baseline model output was matched with an empirically derived forest biomass product for over 28,000 sites at various year-steps of model functioning. After removing immature stands from the analysis, model biomass output and the remotely sensed product were comparable with an r of 0.872. The results of this study suggest that the FAREAST model is fit to simulate Russian boreal and temperate forests on a continental scale with acceptable accuracy for the scientific community. In addition, a simple investigation into the contribution of agriculture to Russian forest carbon displacement was conducted; croplands throughout Russia were found to reduce the carbon storage capacity of the country by less than 10%.