Simulated Forest Aboveground Biomass Dynamics, Northeastern USA

This dataset includes aboveground biomass (AGB) growth trajectories for the first 300 years of forest succession over the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) domain, which includes the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. These data were derived from a process-based ecosystem model called the Ecosystem Demography (ED) model (Hurtt et al 1998; Moorcroft et al. 2001; Ma et al. 2022a). Here, ED was run at a spatial resolution of 1 km with forcings including meteorology from Daymet (Thornton et al 2016) and MERRA2 (Gelaro et al. 2017) and soil hydraulic properties from POLARIS (Chaney et al 2016) and CONUS-SOIL (Miller and White 1998). This dataset is spatially interpolated from its native resolution of 1 km to 30 m to support small scale data analysis. The unit is kg C/m2.

This dataset can support multiple applications relevant to reforestation and afforestation planning. Utilizing this stack of annualized and spatially explicit forest growth trajectories, data users can estimate how much carbon could be stored via natural regeneration in any particular geographic location by any point over the next 300 years under current environmental conditions (air temperature, precipitation, CO2, etc). These data are currently being utilized by the State of Maryland to support climate-smart afforestation and serve as the basis for several carbon sequestration calculations in the University of Maryland Peer-Reviewed Offset Protocol for Maryland Reforestation/Afforestation Projects.

This dataset is the underlying input to a high-resolution forest carbon modeling system developed for the RGGI region. This modeling system combines modeled AGB growth with forest canopy height from airborne lidar data and tree cover fraction to estimate contemporary AGB, carbon sequestration potential, carbon sequestration potential gap and time to reach carbon sequestration potential. More details about the modeling system and ED simulation can be found Ma et al. 2021 and related data products can be found in Ma et al. 2022b.

For questions and support please contact lma6@umd.edu, rachlamb@umd.edu and gchurtt@umd.edu. 

References

Chaney N W, Wood E F, McBratney A B, Hempel J W, Nauman T W, Brungard C W and Odgers N P 2016 POLARIS: a 30-meter probabilistic soil series map of the contiguous United States Geoderma 274 54–67. 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2016.03.025 

Gelaro R et al 2017 The modern-era retrospective analysis for research and applications, version 2 (MERRA-2) J. Clim. 30 5419–54. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0758.1 
Hurtt, G.C., P.R. Moorcroft, S.W. Pacala, and S.A. Levin. 1998 Terrestrial models and global change: challenges for the future. Global Change Biology 4:581-590. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2486.1998.t01-1-00203.x

Ma, L., G. Hurtt, H. Tang, R. Lamb, E. Campbell, R. Dubayah, M. Guy, W. Huang, A. Lister, J. Lu, J. O’Neil-Dunne, A. Rudee, Q. Shen, and C. Silva. 2021. High-resolution forest carbon modelling for climate mitigation planning over the RGGI region, USA. Environmental Research Letters 16:045014. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abe4f4

Ma, L., G. Hurtt, L. Ott, R. Sahajpal, J. Fisk, R. Lamb, H. Tang, S. Flanagan, L. Chini, A. Chatterjee, and J. Sullivan. 2022a. Global evaluation of the Ecosystem Demography model (ED v3.0). Geoscientific Model Development 15:1971–1994. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-1971-2022 

Ma, L., G.C. Hurtt, H. Tang, R. Lamb, E. Campbell, R.O. Dubayah, M. Guy, W. Huang, J. Lu, A. Rudee, Q. Shen, C.E. Silva, and A.J. Lister. 2022b. Forest Aboveground Biomass and Carbon Sequestration Potential, Northeastern USA. ORNL DAAC, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1922 

Miller D A and White R A 1998 A conterminous United States multilayer soil characteristics dataset for regional climate and hydrology modeling Earth Interact. 2 1–26 

Moorcroft, P. R., G.C. Hurtt. and S.W. Pacala, 2001 A method for scaling vegetation dynamics: the ecosystem demography model (ED) Ecol. Monogr. 71 557–86. https://doi.org/10.1890/0012-9615(2001)071[0557:AMFSVD]2.0.CO;2 

Thornton, M.M., Thornton P E, Wei Y, Mayer B W, Cook R B and Vose R S 2016 Daymet: monthly climate summaries on a 1-km grid for North America, version 3 (available at: https://daac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/dsviewer.pl?ds_id=1345)