Articles | Volume 13, issue 9
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-4067-2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-4067-2020
Model description paper
 | 
07 Sep 2020
Model description paper |  | 07 Sep 2020

Robust Ecosystem Demography (RED version 1.0): a parsimonious approach to modelling vegetation dynamics in Earth system models

Arthur P. K. Argles, Jonathan R. Moore, Chris Huntingford, Andrew J. Wiltshire, Anna B. Harper, Chris D. Jones, and Peter M. Cox

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Cited articles

Ahlström, A., Xia, J., Arneth, A., Luo, Y., and Smith, B.: Importance of vegetation dynamics for future terrestrial carbon cycling, Environ. Res. Lett., 10, 054019, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/10/5/054019, 2015. a
Argles, A. P. K.: aargles/RED_DGVM: RED DGVM, version 1.0.1, Zenodo, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3548678, 2019. a
Arora, V. K., Katavouta, A., Williams, R. G., Jones, C. D., Brovkin, V., Friedlingstein, P., Schwinger, J., Bopp, L., Boucher, O., Cadule, P., Chamberlain, M. A., Christian, J. R., Delire, C., Fisher, R. A., Hajima, T., Ilyina, T., Joetzjer, E., Kawamiya, M., Koven, C., Krasting, J., Law, R. M., Lawrence, D. M., Lenton, A., Lindsay, K., Pongratz, J., Raddatz, T., Séférian, R., Tachiiri, K., Tjiputra, J. F., Wiltshire, A., Wu, T., and Ziehn, T.: Carbon-concentration and carbon-climate feedbacks in CMIP6 models, and their comparison to CMIP5 models, Biogeosciences Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-2019-473, in review, 2019. a
Brando, P. M., Balch, J. K., Nepstad, D. C., Morton, D. C., Putz, F. E., Coe, M. T., Silvério, D., Macedo, M. N., Davidson, E. A., Nóbrega, C. C., Alencar, A., and Soares-Filho, B. S.: Abrupt increases in Amazonian tree mortality due to drought–fire interactions, P. Natl. Acad. Sciences, 111, 6347–6352, 2014. a, b
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Short summary
The Robust Ecosystem Demography (RED) model simulates cohorts of vegetation through mass classes. RED establishes a framework for representing demographic changes through competition, growth, and mortality across the size distribution of a forest. The steady state of the model can be solved analytically, enabling initialization. When driven by mean growth rates from a land-surface model, RED is able to fit the observed global vegetation map, giving a map of implicit mortality rates.
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