Chapter 1: Understanding Climate Science and Carbon Models

This chapter discusses climate models, and to convey their usefulness, we need to understand disturbances. We can recognise disturbances as events, such as fires, flooding, insect and pest outbreaks, etc., that cause short-term or temporary changes to the landscape. Although the changes to the landscapes can be short-termed, disturbances can have significant ecosystem impacts.

Carbon models evaluate how artificial or natural disturbances affect our forests. Understanding these disturbances provides us with important information about the future of our landscapes and the steps to take to lessen their negative consequences.

Pools, Stocks and flows

Pools are reservoirs or containers that can hold, accumulate, or discharge chemicals. Nature contains pools in the ocean, the lithosphere, soils, atmosphere, and other places. A carbon pool, for instance, stores and releases carbon.

Stock refers to the entire amount of a substance in a pool at any time.

On the other hand, flows are measured in units per time and alter the stock in a pool.

The bathtub analogy is a great way to explain these concepts. A bathtub holding the water can be considered a pool, the faucet and drain can be understood as flows, and the total water in the bathtub as stock.

Simulation models, States and Transition

Simulation models help provide valuable insights into the dynamics of these landscapes. To run a simulation model, we must define the area or landscape we want to study at a particular time. This landscape is divided into small pixels to be simulated.

A pixel can be classified by its state, which might change over time; for example, simple forest vegetation can have different states like Deciduous, Mixed, and Coniferous. Due to transitions, the forest vegetation can change to a different state over time.

State transitions can be due to fire, harvest, and succession disturbances. These transitions impact the stocks and flows of carbon pools.