This is a page about the
Fluxes from Flooded Vegetation Discussion Group coordinated by Toby Marthews at UKCEH (email me if you are interested in joining the email list for this). Please see also our blog. Schedule of meetings: Meeting 1: 9-NOV-21. Presentation by Ross Morrison about UKCEH flux tower data. Meeting 2: 8-DEC-21. Presentation by Toby Marthews about flooded vegetation and another by Nic Gedney about her upcoming paper. Meeting 3: 8-FEB-22. Presentation by Noah Smith and Toby Marthews on soil supersaturation. Meeting 4: 8-MAR-22 Presentation by Anthony Schrapffer about ORCHIDEE's new Floodplains Scheme and results from the Pantanal. Meeting 5: 12-APR-2022. Presentation by Athanasios Paschalis about his group's current work on the Tethys-Chloris wetland model. Meeting 6: 7-JUN-2022. Presentation on river routing/inundation modelling by Toby. ** Discussion Group closed - there will be no further meetings! ** |
Here are the slides I presented in September 2021 on this topic and here are the slides I presented on 12th October 2021 at our (Zoom) kick-off meeting. I am trying to work out how to address the issues on this topic listed below.
Toby Marthews, October 2021. PS. This group was never a JULES Process Evaluation Group (JPEG, e.g. search for "JPEG" here) because it was not a JULES-specific discussion. |
Global wetlands and other inundated areas: why are they important?
The lack of robust information on the ways in which wetlands fluctuate and function (not just tropical ones) is hampering progress in predicting the effects of global environmental change. We urgently need a better understanding of how wetlands function in the Earth system.
- Wetlands are the largest single natural source of atmospheric methane (CH4) and form a key link between the water and carbon cycles at regional scales.
- Wetland ecosystems mediate large land-atmosphere transfers of heat, water and trace gases at both local and regional scales.
- Global warming resulting from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentrations will likely lead to a 78% increase in wetland emissions of CH4, most of which is expected to come from tropical regions (Shindell et al. 2004, Gedney et al. 2019).
The lack of robust information on the ways in which wetlands fluctuate and function (not just tropical ones) is hampering progress in predicting the effects of global environmental change. We urgently need a better understanding of how wetlands function in the Earth system.
Flooded vegetation is not generally treated explicitly in land surface models. In the JULES code, for example, ice and lake areas on land are assumed to have zero vegetation (and rivers have no width). Routines exist within JULES for specifying irrigated area and predicting inundated area, but these areas are not dynamically linked to the vegetation tiles within the gridcell, meaning that 'flooded vegetation' does not currently exist as a concept within JULES.
People have been thinking about this for a while, e.g. Dadson et al. (2010) "Vegetated zones can and do become flooded, in proportion to their original surface cover fractions. At present we have insufficient information on the detailed biophysical response of vegetation to flooding to model this process explicitly, but we note that potential improvement for future work.". Also, Miguez-Macho & Fan (2012) had a section Evaporation From Floodwater Surface (although no mention of the flooded vegetation). Think about these points:
|