Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41501535›Full record

ArticleCarbon balance and management2026

Influence of simulated vs. satellite-based burned areas on modelled terrestrial carbon fluxes.

Tiago Ermitão, Célia Gouveia, Ana Russo, Chantelle Burton, Evgenii Churiulin, Jefferson Gonçalves de Souza, Michael O' Sullivan, Philippe Ciais, Sönke Zaehle, Stephen Sitch and 3 more

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Article in Carbon balance and management, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

13 authors.

Tiago ErmitãoFaculty of Sciences, Dom Luiz Institute, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal.
Célia GouveiaFaculty of Sciences, Dom Luiz Institute, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal.
Ana RussoFaculty of Sciences, Dom Luiz Institute, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal.
Chantelle BurtonMetOffice Hadley Centre, Exeter, UK.
Evgenii ChuriulinDepartment of Biogeochemical Integration, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, 07745, Jena, Germany.
Jefferson Gonçalves de SouzaFaculty of Environment, Science and Economy, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.
Michael O' SullivanFaculty of Environment, Science and Economy, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.
Philippe CiaisLaboratoire des Sciences du Climat Et de L Environnement, University Paris-Saclay CEA CNRS, 91191, Gif-Sur-Yvette, France.
Sönke ZaehleDepartment of Biogeochemical Integration, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, 07745, Jena, Germany.
Stephen SitchFaculty of Environment, Science and Economy, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.
Wei LiDepartment of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
Yidi XuLaboratoire des Sciences du Climat Et de L Environnement, University Paris-Saclay CEA CNRS, 91191, Gif-Sur-Yvette, France.
Ana BastosInstitute for Earth System Science and Remote Sensing, Leipzig University, 04103, Leipzig, Germany. ana.bastos@uni-leipzig.de.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundThe Global Carbon Project provides annual updates on anthropogenic and natural components of the Global Carbon Budget. Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs) contribute to these estimates and are used to simulate the evolution of terrestrial carbon sinks. However, DGVMs are known to poorly represent disturbances such as fire, leading to uncertainties in estimates of mean, interannual variability (IAV), and trends in land carbon fluxes. To address this issue, we propose a hybrid-process-based assessmentby constraining three DGVMs (OCN, JULES-INFERNO, and ORCHIDEE-MICT) with remotely-sensed burned areas from ESA CCI (FIRECCI51) and climate data from ERA5 reanalysis. We aim to improve the representation of the spatio-temporal variability of regional carbon budgets, namely fire emissions, above-ground biomass carbon (AGC), and vegetation-related variables—leaf area index (LAI) and gross primary productivity (GPP).

resultsPrescribing burned area (BA) in DGVMs reveals contrasting patterns between prognostic (model simulations) and diagnostic (simulations with prescribed BA) runs. As prognostic tends to overestimate BA, particularly across tropical and high-latitude regions, diagnostic simulations correct this issue, by reducing bias and improving the IAV and the agreement with satellite-based datasets of BA and fire emissions in these regions. Moreover, enhanced IAV of AGC is simulated by diagnostic runs, essentially due to better representation of biomass carbon in the mentioned regions. Although moderate improvements are found in LAI and GPP, as the differences between the two runs are more limited, the improvements between prognostic and diagnostic are more evident in their IAV, particularly for LAI, rather than on long-term means, indicating that prescribed fire can improve the representation of some variability patterns.

conclusionsPrescribing remotely-sensed BA in models can lead to a better representation of global BA, fire emissions and AGC, particularly improving the IAV, reducing bias and enhancing the agreement with satellite datasets. The moderate improvements in vegetation-related variables underscore the need to better constrain fire impacts and vegetation dynamics in models, to enhance the simulation of spatio-temporal variability and dynamics of regional-scale vegetation and carbon-related fluxes.

Indexed as

Burned AreaDGVMsFIRECCI51Global Carbon StocksModel BenchmarkingRECCAP2Satellite-based data

Identifiers

PMID41501535
PMCPMC12781732

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.