Regional-Scale Data Assimilation with The Spatially Explicit Individual-Based Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (SEIB-DGVM) Over Siberia

Abstract This study examined the regional performance of a data assimilation (DA) system that couples the particle filter and the Spatially Explicit Individual-based Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (SEIB-DGVM). This DA system optimizes model parameters of dormancy and photosynthetic rate, which are sensitive to phenology in the SEIB-DGVM, by assimilating satellite-observed leaf area index (LAI). The experiments without DA overestimated LAIs over Siberia relative to the satellite-observed LAI, whereas the DA system successfully reduced the error. DA provided improved analyses for the LAI and other model variables consistently, with better match with satellite observed LAI and with previous studies for spatial distributions of the estimated tree LAI, gross primary production (GPP), and above ground biomass. Most remarkably, the spatial distribution of tree LAI was estimated separately from undergrowth LAI because the SEIB-DGVM simulated the vertical structure of forest explicitly, and because satellite-observed LAI provided information on the onset and the end of the leaf season of tree and undergrowth, respectively. The DA system also provided the spatial distribution of the model parameters for tree separately from those of undergrowth. DA experiments started dormancy of trees more than a month earlier than the default phenology model and resulted in a decrease of the GPP.