ABSTRACT
Despite ecosystems regulate climate through biogeochemistry (e.g., greenhouse gas exchanges) and biophysics (e.g., water and energy balance), current policies only focus on biogeochemical influences (i.e., CO2 emissions). Recently, Anderson-Teixeira et al. (2012) proposed a climate regulation value (CRV) index that accounts for the biogeochemical and biogeophysical ecosystem properties that affect the value of ecosystem-climate services. The CRV converts the biophysical effects into biogeochemical units. Hence, the CRV offers the possibility of expanding the suite of climate regulation services considered in the current global policies and carbon markets. The biophysical part of the CRV is estimated from ecosystem’s surface net radiation and latent heat flux, which are simulated using land surface models such as Integrated Biosphere Simulator (IBIS) (Foley et al. 1996; Kucharik et al. 2000) or Noah Land Surface Model (LSM) (Chen et al. 1996; Chen and Dudhia 2001; Ek et al. 2003). In general, these simulations involve the use of variables related to vegetation such as leaf area index, stomatal resistance, rooting depth, albedo and transmittance
16.5 Discussion and Conclusions .................................................................... 373 Acknowledgments .............................................................................................. 374 References ............................................................................................................. 374
in the visible and near infrared, heat, water and snow capacities, and others. This chapter presents an original method to estimate and monitor such variables using satellite information and coupled climate regional models.
