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Abstract Recent advances in satellite observations of solar‐induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) provide a new opportunity to constrain the simulation of terrestrial gross primary productivity (GPP). Accurate representation of the processes driving SIF emission and its radiative transfer to remote sensing sensors is an essential prerequisite for data assimilation. Recently, SIF simulations have been incorporated into several land surface models, but the scaling of SIF from leaf‐level to canopy‐level is usually not well‐represented. Here, we incorporate the simulation of far‐red SIF observed at nadir into the Community Land Model version 5 (CLM5). Leaf‐level fluorescence yield was simulated by a parametric simplification of the Soil Canopy‐Observation of Photosynthesis and Energy fluxes model (SCOPE). And an efficient and accurate method based on escape probability is developed to scale SIF from leaf‐level to top‐of‐canopy while taking clumping and the radiative transfer processes into account. SIF simulated by CLM5 and SCOPE agreed well at sites except one in needleleaf forest (R2 > 0.91, root‐mean‐square error <0.19 W⋅m−2⋅sr−1⋅μm−1), and captured the day‐to‐day variation of tower‐measured SIF at temperate forest sites (R2 > 0.68). At the global scale, simulated SIF generally captured the spatial and seasonal patterns of satellite‐observed SIF. Factors including the fluorescence emission model, clumping, bidirectional effect, and leaf optical properties had considerable impacts on SIF simulation, and the discrepancies between simulate d and observed SIF varied with plant functional type. By improving the representation of radiative transfer for SIF simulation, our model allows better comparisons between simulated and observed SIF toward constraining GPP simulations.
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Solar‐induced chlorophyll fluorescence is strongly correlated with terrestrial photosynthesis for a wide variety of biomes: First global analysis based on OCO‐2 and flux tower observations
Abstract Solar‐induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) has been increasingly used as a proxy for terrestrial gross primary productivity (GPP). Previous work mainly evaluated the relationship between satellite‐observed SIF and gridded GPP products both based on coarse spatial resolutions. Finer resolution SIF (1.3 km × 2.25 km) measured from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory‐2 (OCO‐2) provides the first opportunity to examine the SIF–GPP relationship at the ecosystem scale using flux tower GPP data. However, it remains unclear how strong the relationship is for each biome and whether a robust, universal relationship exists across a variety of biomes. Here we conducted the first global analysis of the relationship between OCO‐2 SIF and tower GPP for a total of 64 flux sites across the globe encompassing eight major biomes. OCO‐2 SIF showed strong correlations with tower GPP at both midday and daily timescales, with the strongest relationship observed for daily SIF at the 757 nm (R2 = 0.72,p < 0.0001). Strong linear relationships between SIF and GPP were consistently found for all biomes (R2 = 0.57–0.79,p < 0.0001) except evergreen broadleaf forests (R2 = 0.16,p < 0.05) at the daily timescale. A higher slope was found for C4grasslands and croplands than for C3ecosystems. The generally consistent slope of the relationship among biomes suggests a nearly universal rather than biome‐specific SIF–GPP relationship, and this finding is an important distinction and simplification compared to previous results. SIF was mainly driven by absorbed photosynthetically active radiation and was also influenced by environmental stresses (temperature and water stresses) that determine photosynthetic light use efficiency. OCO‐2 SIF generally had a better performance for predicting GPP than satellite‐derived vegetation indices and a light use efficiency model. The universal SIF–GPP relationship can potentially lead to more accurate GPP estimates regionally or globally. Our findings revealed the remarkable ability of finer resolution SIF observations from OCO‐2 and other new or future missions (e.g., TROPOMI, FLEX) for estimating terrestrial photosynthesis across a wide variety of biomes and identified their potential and limitations for ecosystem functioning and carbon cycle studies.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1637459
- PAR ID:
- 10059121
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Global Change Biology
- Volume:
- 24
- Issue:
- 9
- ISSN:
- 1354-1013
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 3990-4008
- Size(s):
- p. 3990-4008
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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