New article in the Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR): Biogeoscience

 

Whether ecosystems absorb or emit CO2 plays a major role in the global carbon cycle and impacts climate change. This exchange is already measured at scattered stations, but creating spatially resolved data sets remains a challenge. In this paper, we used satellite images of vegetation and meteorological data to predict the CO2 exchange of the Rur catchment area near the German‐Dutch‐Belgian border for every day from 2010 to 2018. In order to assess the prediction quality, we compared actual measurements from several stations within the catchment with the predictions at the locations of these stations. Results show that our method could increase prediction quality compared to previous process‐based models, though the error remains rather high. Vegetated parts of the catchment including coniferous forests, deciduous forests, grasslands, and croplands were all CO2 sinks on average. In late spring and early summer, they were the strongest sink, but in fall and winter a CO2 source.