Natural Vegetation

Model structure

NVM consists of two components.

1. The first component calculates relevant climate indices. These indices integrate important aspects of climate, such as frost occurrence and severity, characteristics of the growing season and moisture availability. The actual and potential evapotranspiration (AET and PET, respectively), as simulated by the climate model are calculated using a simple water bucket model. Subsequently, the growing season is defined as the period with adequate temperatures (> 5°C) and sufficient moisture (precipitation > 0.5 PET). Finally, the mean temperature is calculated over the growing season.
2. The second component, a modified version of the BIOME model (Prentice at al., 1992), computes potential vegetation, which is used in the land-cover model. The climate indices from the first model component are used to determine the potential distribution of major plant types (e.g. needle-leafed vs. broad-leafed, deciduous vs. evergreen, trees vs. shrubs and grasses). The plant types are then combined into biomes (large-scale vegetation complexes).       

• to  external references 
• to  MNP references