The Arctic-Boreal vulnerability experiment model benchmarking system
NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) integrates field and airborne data into modeling and synthesis activities for understanding Arctic and Boreal ecosystem dynamics. The ABoVEBenchmarking System (ABS) is an operational software package to evaluate terrestrial biospheremodels against key indicators of Arctic and Boreal ecosystemdynamics, i.e.: carbon biogeochemistry, vegetation, permafrost, hydrology, and disturbance. TheABS utilizes satellite remote sensing data, airborne data, andfield data fromABoVE aswell as collaborating research networks in the region, e.g.: the Permafrost CarbonNetwork, the International Soil CarbonNetwork, theNorthernCircumpolar Soil CarbonDatabase, AmeriFlux sites, theModerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, theOrbiting CarbonObservatory 2, and the SoilMoisture Active Passivemission. TheABS is designed to be interactive for researchers interested in having theirmodels accurately represent observations of key Arctic indicators: a user submitsmodel results to the system, the system evaluates themodel results against a set of Arctic-Boreal benchmarks outlined in the ABoVEConcise Experiment Plan, and the user then receives a quantitative scoring ofmodel strengths and deficiencies through aweb interface. This interactivity allowsmodel developers to iteratively improve theirmodel for the Arctic-Boreal Region by evaluating results from successivemodel versions.We showhere, for illustration, the improvement of the Lund–Potsdam–Jena-Wald Schnee und Landschaft (LPJwsl) versionmodel through theABoVEABS as a newpermafrostmodule is coupled to the existingmodel framework. TheABSwill continue to incorporate new benchmarks that address indicators of ArcticBoreal ecosystemdynamics as they become available.