Members of the Ecosystem Ecology and Modeling Lab are developing various tools for facilitating ecosystem research. Please find more information below. If you need any help on using those tools, please do not hesitate to contact us.


TraceME: A Traceability Analysis System for Model Evaluation (Version 1.0)

Update Date: 2020-10-22

Summary

Inter-comparisons among Earth system models (ESMs) as well as between ESMs and data are an essential process to understand the performance of models, reduce their uncertainty, and provide a clear roadmap for model development. As both of the complexity of ESMs increases and the data volume expands rapidly in recent years, the much-needed comprehensive and systematic model evaluation faces many new challenges. One challenge is that model evaluation needs systematically trace the sources of inter-model variations in key processes. The TraceME platform is a web-based tool for faciliating the model evaluations and improvments. The current version (i.e., V1.0) is designed forthe Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIPs).

PlantNE_v1
Figure 1: The workflow of TraceME.

Citation

Zhou J, Xia J, Wei N, Liu Y, Bian C, Bai Y, Luo Y. The Traceability Analysis System for Model Evaluation on Land Carbon Dynamics: Design and Applications. Ecological Processes (In presss).

Web Link

http://traceme.org.cn/


Analytical tool for quantifying reproductive phenology based on the Richard gorwth function

Update Date: 2020-10-22

Summary

The changes in plant reproductive phenology with time follow a logistic growth curve.As shown in the following figure, the reproductive phenology of both graminoid (grass) and non-graminoid (forb and semi-shrub) species can be divided into several stages. For grasses, there were six stages: plant with flower stalks (stage 0), most culms in boot were visible (stage 0.5), presence of spikelets (stage 1), exerted anthers and styles from the spikelet florets (stage 2), dried and broken off anthers and styles (seed devel-opment; stage 3), and disarticulated seeds (stage 4). For forbs and semi-shrubs, plant phenology was divided into seven stages: plant not yet flowering (stage 0), unopened buds (stage 1), open flowers (stage 2), old flowers (post-anthesis; stage 3), initiated fruit (stage 4), expanding fruit (stage 5) and dehisced fruit (stage 6).

The Richard growth equation has been successfully applied for studying plant phenology in grassland. This package is written by Matlab, and is a quantative tool to obtain the phenological tiemes based on discrete phenological observations. More details about the code and method can be found in the paper of Xia & wan (2013).

PlantNE_v1
Figure: Ideal curves of phenological stage changes for graminoids (G; grey lines) and forbs and semi-shrubs (F; black lines). Details of the methods are provided in the text of Xia & Wan (2013).

Citation

Xia J, Wan S. 2013. Independent effects of warming and nitrogen addition on plant phenology in the Inner Mongolian steppe. Annals of Botany, 111: 1207-1217.

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