Long-Term Ecosystem Inventories: Raw Dataset for Harvard Forest Long Term Ecological Research (LTER)

Evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of ecosystem models requires appropriate datasets for model verification and validation. The overarching goal of this project is to compile and appraise long-term data on ecosystem C and N in order to structure model evaluation questions for future proposals. We compared these available data with the required inputs for a suite of widely used landscape scale ecosystem models LANDIS-II: Landscape Disturbance and Succession model (core, century succession, dynamic fire, leaf biomass fuel), Fire-BGCv2: Fire and Biochemical Cycles model, and SPA: Soil Plant Atmosphere model. From cross referencing with model requirements, we identified any data gaps, both lapses in data collection and variables not measured. In addition, scaled data from stand to landscape level to identify issues related to data aggregation or interpolation.