Recent prolonged droughts and catastrophic wildfires in the western United States have raised concerns about the potential for forest mortality to impact forest structure, forest ecosystem services, and the economic vitality of communities in the coming decades. We used the Community Land Model (CLM) to determine forest vulnerability to mortality from drought and fire by the year 2049. We modified CLM to represent 13 major for...

This study uses a global climate model (GCM) to investigate the climate response at the surface and in the atmosphere caused by land use change. The climate simulations are performed with the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Land Model 3.5 (CLM3.5) coupled to the Community Atmosphere Model 3 (CAM3) and a slab ocean model. We use the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) surface albedo product...

A negative feedback of vegetation cover on subsequent annual precipitation is simulated for the mid‐Holocene over North Africa using a fully coupled general circulation model with dynamic vegetation, FOAM‐LPJ (Fast Ocean Atmosphere Model‐Lund Potsdam Jena Model). By computing a vegetation feedback parameter based on lagged auto‐covariances, the simulated impact of North African vegetation on precipitation is statistically quan...

Changes in vegetation structure and biogeography due to climate change feedback to alter climate by changing fluxes of energy, moisture, and momentum between land and atmosphere. While the current class of land process models used with climate models parameterizes these fluxes in detail, these models prescribe surface vegetation and leaf area from data sets. In this paper, we describe an approach in which ecological concepts f...

Summary In order to investigate the hypothesis that the Earth's climate and vegetation patterns may have more than one basic state, we use the fully coupled GENESIS‐IBIS model. GENESIS is an atmospheric general circulation model. IBIS is a dynamic global vegetation model that integrates biophysical, physiological, and ecological processes. GENESIS and IBIS are coupled by way of a common land surface interface to allow for the...

Numerous studies have underscored the importance of terrestrial ecosystems as an integral component of the Earth's climate system. This realization has already led to efforts to link simple equilibrium vegetation models with Atmospheric General Circulation Models through iterative coupling procedures. While these linked models have pointed to several possible climate–vegetation feedback mechanisms, they have been limited by tw...