Abstract:
The expansion of human enhanced greenhouse effect is increasing significantly with increasing
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels. Understanding the factors controlling land carbon up take is
critical for projections of future climate. For calculating carbon pool acquired through
photosynthesis, Dynamic Global Vegetation Model’s (DGVM’s) have been used.
For this study LPJ-GUESS was used which is a process based dynamic vegetation terrestrial
ecosystem model designed for regional or global studies. The model can predict structural,
compositional and functional properties of the native ecosystem of major climate zones of the
earth. Pugh et al. (2015) assessed the effect of agricultural land management practices using LPJ-
GUESS. The study measured carbon emissions under present and future climate change
scenarios by incorporating emissions from land use changes.
The data from this study was used to assess land use emissions of Pakistan under different
agricultural land management practices. The LPJ-GUESS simulations estimated for the past
years from 1850-1950 showed that agricultural activities emitted less carbon dioxide that as
compared to 1951-2012. Furthermore, for vegetation carbon, soil carbon and total carbon
analyses suggest that for the RCP 8.5 future scenario the model predicts slightly lower carbon
values compare to the RCP 2.6 future scenario.
Key Words: Climate change, Dynamic Global Vegetation Models, LPJ-GUESS, Agricultural
land management practices, Net Ecosystem Exchange, Carbon pool.
