Assessing seasonality of boreal coniferous forest CO₂ exchange by estimating biochemical model parameters from micrometeorological flux observations

Abstract

Abstract. The biochemical seasonality of the northern boreal coniferous forests was investigated by means of inversion modelling using eddy covariance data. Eddy covariance data was used to optimize the biochemical model parameters. Our study sites consisted of three Scots pine (l. Pinus sylvestris) forests and one Norway spruce (l. Picea abies) forest that were located in Finland and Sweden. We obtained temperature and seasonal dependence for the biochemical model parameters: the maximum rate of carboxylation (Vc(max) and the maximum rate of electron transport (Jmax). Both of the parameters were optimized without assumptions about their mutual magnitude. The values obtained for the biochemical model parameters were similar at all the sites during summer time. To describe seasonality, different temperature fits were made for the spring, summer and autumn periods. During summer, average Jmax across the sites was 54.0 μmol m−2 s−1 (variance 31.2 μmol m−2 s-1) and Vc(max) was 12.0 μmol m−2 s−1 (variance 6.6 μmol m−2 s-1) at 17°C. The sensitivity of the model to LAI was also studied. Simulation runs were done to study the effect of the seasonality implemented in the model using different temperature fits. The impact of seasonality on annual GPP was 15%, which corresponded to an increase of 2°C in air temperature.