Modeling net primary productivity of terrestrial ecosystems in the semi-arid climate of the Mongolian Plateau using LSWI-based CASA ecosystem model

Abstract

Since the estimate of moisture stress coefficients (MSC) in the current Carnegie-Ames-Stanford-Approach (CASA) model still requires considerable inputs from ground meteorological data and many soil parameters, here we present a modified CASA model by introducing the land-surface water index (LSWI) and scaled precipitation to model the vegetation net primary productivity (NPP) in the arid and semiarid climate of the Mongolian Plateau. The field-observed NPP data and a previously proposed model (the Yu-CASA model) were used to evaluate the performance of our LSWI-based CASA model. The results show that the NPP predicted by both the LSWI-based CASA model and the Yu-CASA model showed good agreement with the observed NPP in the grassland ecosystems in the study area, with coefficients of determination of 0.717 and 0.714, respectively. The LSWI-based CASA model also performed comparably with the Yu-CASA model at both biome and per-pixel scales when keeping other inputs unchanged, with a difference of approximately 16gC in the growing-season total NPP and an average value of 2.3gC bias for each month. This indicates that, unlike an earlier method that estimated MSC based entirely on climatic variables or a soil moisture model, the method proposed here simplifies the model structure, reduces the need for ground measurements, and can provide results comparable with those from earlier models. The LSWI-based CASA model is potentially an alternative method for modelling NPP for a wide range of vegetation types in the Mongolian Plateau.