Abstract
Net primary production (NPP) is an important ecological metric for studying forest ecosystems and their carbon sequestration, for assessing the potential supply of food or timber and quantifying the impacts of climate change on ecosystems. The global MODIS NPP dataset using the MOD17 algorithm provides valuable information for monitoring NPP at 1-km resolution. Since coarse-resolution global climate data are used, the global dataset may contain uncertainties for Europe. We used a 1-km daily gridded European climate data set with the MOD17 algorithm to create the regional NPP dataset MODIS EURO. For evaluation of this new dataset, we compare MODIS EURO with terrestrial driven NPP from analyzing and harmonizing forest inventory data (NFI) from 196,434 plots in 12 European countries as well as the global MODIS NPP dataset for the years 2000 to 2012. Comparing these three NPP datasets, we found that the global MODIS NPP dataset differs from NFI NPP by 26%, while MODIS EURO only differs by 7%. MODIS EURO also agrees with NFI NPP across scales (from continental, regional to country) and gradients (elevation, location, tree age, dominant species, etc.). The agreement is particularly good for elevation, dominant species or tree height. This suggests that using improved climate data allows the MOD17 algorithm to provide realistic NPP estimates for Europe. Local discrepancies between MODIS EURO and NFI NPP can be related to differences in stand density due to forest management and the national carbon estimation methods. With this study, we provide a consistent, temporally continuous and spatially explicit productivity dataset for the years 2000 to 2012 on a 1-km resolution, which can be used to assess climate change impacts on ecosystems or the potential biomass supply of the European forests for an increasing bio-based economy. MODIS EURO data are made freely available at ftp://palantir.boku.ac.at/Public/MODIS_EURO.
Highlights
Net primary production (NPP), the difference between Gross Primary Production (GPP) and plant autotrophic respiration, is the net carbon or biomass fixed by vegetation through photosynthesis.NPP represents the allocation rate of photosynthetic products into plant biomass and can be used to measure the quantity of goods provided to society by ecosystems [1,2,3]
∆NPPGLOB is positive for most countries, while the discrepancy of vs. national forest inventory (NFI) NPP in the subplot in the bottom-right corner), we present median by country, solid line is NFI NPP1:1 in line, the subplot in the bottom-right median by country, solid lineRis
Aside from Germany and Poland MODIS EURO and NFI NPP are similar across the NPP gradient for the analyzed countries
Summary
Net primary production (NPP), the difference between Gross Primary Production (GPP) and plant autotrophic respiration, is the net carbon or biomass fixed by vegetation through photosynthesis. NPP represents the allocation rate of photosynthetic products into plant biomass and can be used to measure the quantity of goods provided to society by ecosystems [1,2,3]. NPP of forest ecosystems is essential to estimate the potential supply of biomass for bioenergy, fiber and timber supply. NPP is a key variable to assess environmental change impacts on ecosystems [4] since any variation in the growing conditions influences the carbon cycle due to changes in carbon uptake and/or respiration. As interest grows in utilizing forests for a “bio-based economy” [5,6], more accurate and realistic forest productivity estimates become increasingly important. Competing forest ecosystem services, such as biodiversity or and nature conservation, need to be considered to ensure sustainable use of our forests and to avoid unsustainable over-exploitation of renewable resources
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
