Estimating net primary productivity in tropical forest plantations in India using satellite-driven ecosystem model

Abstract

<p>Net Primary Productivity (NPP) is a significant biophysical vegetation variable to understand the spatio-temporal distribution of carbon and source-sink nature of the ecosystem. This study was carried out in a forest plantation area and aimed to (i) estimate the spatio-temporal patterns of NPP during 2009 and 2010 using Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach [CASA] model and (ii) study the effects of climate variables on the NPP using generalized linear modelling (GLM) approach. The total annual NPP varied from 157.21 to 1030.89 gC m⁻² yr⁻¹ for the year 2009 and from 154.36 to 1124.85 g C m⁻² yr⁻¹ for the year 2010. The annual NPP was assessed across four major plantation types, where maximum NPP gain (106 and 139 g C m⁻² yr⁻¹ ) in October was noticed in teak (<i>Tectona grandis</i>) and minimum (77 and 109 g C m⁻² yr⁻¹ ) in eucalyptus (<i>Eucalyptus hybrid</i>) during 2009 and 2010.The validation, using field-estimated NPP, showed under-estimation of modelled NPP, with maximum MAPE of 34% for eucalyptus and minimum of 13% for teak. The dominant influence of precipitation on the NPP was revealed by GLM explaining more than 20% of variation. CASA model efficiently estimated the annual NPP of plantations. The accuracy could be improved further with inclusion of higher resolution data.</p