Integrating surface-atmosphere Exchange Processes Across Scales - Modeling and Monitoring

Mission Statement

Scales play an important role for the analysis and interpretation of climate-relevant feedback processes between biosphere and atmosphere. Particularly for highly structured domains such as Arctic permafrost landscapes, to accurately predict large-scale, long-term changes in ecosystem functionality, we need to investigate processes at fine-scales to understand the drivers of these changes. Also, new observational insight into links between ecosystem characteristics and carbon and energy processes needs to be assimilated into flexible modeling frameworks, ideally combining the individual advantages of different modeling philosophies.

Our working group integrates multi-disciplinary observational and modeling approaches, currently with a regional focus on Arctic permafrost landscapes. The monitoring techniques cover scales ranging from a few centimeters (e.g. soil cores) to thousands of kilometers (e.g. atmospheric trace gas mixing ratios), with a strong focus on atmospheric observations but also including disciplines such as hydrology, soil science and microbiology. On the modeling site, the IPAS group customizes process-based biogeochemical models, data-driven statistical modeling and atmospheric inverse modeling techniques for application in high-latitude permafrost environments, with the overarching objective of combining their individual strengths, and assimilating the newly generated datasets.