Plant parameter values for models in temperate climates

Abstract

Ecological, and especially hydrological models used to assess the effects of land cover changes require various input parameters for plants. Regional model applications rely on detailed information about the properties of the vegetation, especially if process-based approaches are chosen. As raising acceptable data is a time consuming issue, scientists often use globally approximated plant parameter ranges, rather than considering published data sets. The plant parameters summarised in this overview, i.e. albedo, interception capacity, maximum leaf area index, rooting depth, plant height and stomatal conductance, can be used as data for a wide range of published ecological and hydrological models. We concentrate on a presentation of values for temperate regions in order to list a manageable amount of data. Information on plant species is grouped into four main land cover types, crops, pasture (herbs, forbs, grasses), coniferous and deciduous trees. Overall, more than 1300 values for the described parameters have been gathered and present a solid data base for future applications. Further properties of species and sites, such as stand age, basal area, stock density, plant height, mean annual precipitation, mean annual temperature, coordinates and country are given, if available. In many cases of model applications scientists used parameter spans, with no further information or testing of the distribution of data. Twenty-two of the total of 26 data sets subsumed in this data base contained sufficient values to perform a Kolmogorov–Smirnov-test. Twenty of these 22 data sets are normally distributed. In order to investigate spatial differences, the data for stomatal conductance, leaf area index and interception capacity were grouped into North American and European land cover species. Significant differences could only be determined for the leaf area index of deciduous trees and pasture species between the continents.