Development and Validation of Hourly Based Sim-CYCLE Fine in a Temperate C_3//C₄ Coexisting Grassland

Development and Validation of Hourly Based Sim-CYCLE Fine in a Temperate C_3//C₄ Coexisting Grassland

We developed a local-scale ecophysiological model, Sim-CYCLE Fine by modifying Sim-CYCLE which was developed for a global scale simulation. Sim-CYCLE fine is able to simulate not only carbon fluxes but also plant growth with various time-steps from an hour to a month. The model outputs of $CO_2$ flux and biomass/LAI were highly reliable; we validated the model results with measurements from the eddy covariance technique and the harvest method ($R^2$ values of around 0.9 for both). The results suggested that the phonology and the seasonal dynamics of the $C_3/C4$ plant communities affected significantly the carbon fluxes and the plant growth during the plant growing season.