VEMAP 2: Monthly Ecosystem Model Responses to Climate Change

VEMAP 2 contains monthly gridded model outputs from a major international project evaluating terrestrial ecosystem sensitivity to climate and CO2 changes. The dataset includes results from five biogeochemical cycling models and two dynamic global vegetation models, driven by historical (1895-1993) and projected (1994-2100) climate data from CCCma and Hadley Centre models. This collaborative effort by ORNL_CLOUD and other institutions provides simulated ecosystem processes for the contiguous United States.

Use Cases

• Comparing outputs from different biogeochemical models (e.g., Biome-BGC, Century) for variables like net primary production and carbon storage under historical climate.
• Analyzing transient ecosystem responses, including vegetation succession and fire simulation from dynamic global vegetation models, to projected climate change from 1994-2100.
• Validating or benchmarking new ecosystem models against a standard set of gridded climate drivers (temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, humidity, wind speed).
• Studying long-term trends in ecosystem functions like decomposition and nutrient cycling under altered atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Strengths

• Includes outputs from seven distinct ecosystem models, enabling model intercomparison studies.
• Covers a long temporal range from 1895 to 2100, combining historical baseline with future projections.
• Uses climate forcing data from two established climate system models (CCCma and Hadley Centre).
• Results from a large, multi-institutional international collaboration signal methodological rigor.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, column names, and exact file size are unavailable across all sources.
• Conflicting last update dates exist (2100-12 31 vs 2026-03-12), suggesting placeholder dates or unclear maintenance.
• The license is specified only as 'other-license-specified', requiring users to investigate terms.

Provenance

Source

Vegetation-Ecosystem Modeling and Analysis Project (VEMAP), ORNL_CLOUD.

Collection Method

Model outputs from selected biogeochemical and dynamic global vegetation models run on gridded historical and projected climate data.

Time Range

1895-2100

Freshness

2026-03 12 20:24:53.867454

Geography

Contiguous United States (implied by VEMAP grid format).