Rigorous data for effective modelling
Environmental change is one of the key issues that all countries need to resolve beyond their boundaries. Following international trends, Europe needs to build a suitable scientific and technological basis as well as tools in order to understand and monitor the processes of environmental change. Nevertheless, the European dimension should be considered as part of the global change phenomenon. Addressing both European and global scales, the CAMELS project focused on developing a carbon cycle data assimilation system. Research work utilised existing data sources such as CO2 fluxes, satellite retrievals of vegetation greenness, forest inventories and CO2 measurements. In combination with latest Terrestrial Ecosystem Models (TEMs) this data would produce estimates of the European land carbon sink. Ultimately, process-based TEMs and suitable forest inventory models can isolate the contribution made by land management to environmental change as dictated by the Kyoto Protocol. Research work was based on data coming from the AEROCARB project in which several high profile European institutions involved in atmospheric CO2 measurements were engaged. Data were collected during the period between January 1997 to December 2001 including records with site and its height and year. This was made into a single, coherent data set aimed for further use in models to retrieve the European CO2 fluxes.
