Multi-scale fire modeling in the neotropics: coupling a land surface model to a high resolution fire spread model, considering land cover heterogeneity

• Ano de defesa: 2014
• Autor(a) principal: Etienne Tourigny
• Orientador(a): Carlos Afonso Nobre
• Banca de defesa: Manoel Ferreira Cardoso, Paulo Monteiro Brando, Marina Hirota Magalhães
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE)
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Pós-Graduação do INPE em Meteorologia
• País: BR
• Link de acesso: http://urlib.net/sid.inpe.br/mtc-m21b/2014/05.30.00.36

Land-Use and Land-Cover Change (LUCC) is a major cause of biomass burning in neotropical ecosystems, through logging and slash-and-burn clearing of forests for agriculture and subsequent pasture burning. Current Dynamic Vegetation Models (DGVMs), the land surface components of Earth System Models (ESMs), are incapable of modeling fire processes in tropical rainforests, and do not represent the local-scale land surface properties and processes associated with LUCC and fire spread. The modeling of the complex interactions between LUCC, climate change, droughts and fire in the tropics requires a framework to simulate these components and their interactions across multiple scales. A new modeling framework is proposed, in order to better represent fire in the neotropics within DGVMs, by simulating fire spread and its interactions with LUCC and the global Earth System. This study consists of three parts: the implementation of \emph{subgrid tiling} in the INLAND DGVM and a multi-scale framework to down-scale the model to a finer scale; the implementation of a simple fire spread model and one-way coupling (downscaling) with the INLA:\"D mo del ; the validation of global burned area products in the "are of deforestation" for mo del calibration and validation. The implementation of \emph{subgrid tiling} in the INLAND DGVM has made it possible to represent different land surface types (natural or modified by human activities) inside a given mo del grid cell. However further work is needed in order to parametrize landscapes infiuenced by human activities. The custom fire spread model, coupled to the INLAND model, has demonstrated the ability to simulate realistic fire spread patterns and sensitivity to various parameters such as land cover type, deforestation patterns, the presence of roads, and wind speed and direction. Further work is needed in order to improve the parametrizations and consider air and fuel moisture and fuel content, as well as up-scaling the results to the coupled DGVM. The validation of global burned area products in the "are of deforestation" brings sufficient confidence in using these products for the calibration and validation of the fire components of DGVMs and ESMs in this region. This study has demonstrated the potential of the multi-scale modeling framework for studying the synergies between climate change, LUCC and fire in the neotropics.