FEST-C for Bi-directional CMAQ: - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

FEST-C for Bi-directional CMAQ:Update

Ellen Cooter

U.S. EPA, National Exposure Research Lab, Research Triangle Park, NC

Verel Benson

Benson

Consulting, Columbia, MO

Limei Ran

Institute for the Environment, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC

19 September, 2013

Slide2

Outline

Drivers

Implementation of the linked agricultural

management and air quality system

Agricultural management model overview

A tool to generate fertilizer input information for

gridded air quality models

Model performance improvement

Applications

Slide3

3

Research Drivers

Increases during the last several decades in regional-to-global air, land and water nitrogen (N) inputs pose a growing threat

to human

health and

ecosystem

sustainability.

Policy actions that address this threat demand improved characterization of all aspects of the N-cycle, including air quality.

Slide4

Areas in need of improved treatment include:

Characterization of nitrogen species such as NH

3

that exhibit bi-directional air-surface exchange.

More complete integration of agricultural practices and meteorologically-driven emissions to reduce NH

3

and inorganic PM

2.5

concentration and deposition uncertainty.

Development of the capacity to explore options that support joint air, land and water environmental outcomes to protect human health and ecosystems (i.e., MDST3).

Slide5

All three of these areas are addressed through the linked EPIC/Bi-directional CMAQ or BIDI system, whose focus is improving estimates of soil ammonia emissions

Slide6

Soil emissions can be important

~85% of ammonia emissions come from agriculture and ~ 75% of agricultural emissions come from livestock production.

Livestock operations are primarily NH

3

emitters (unidirectional), so flux is estimated relatively easily as a function of livestock numbers and meteorology.

Crop soil flux is often bidirectional (emissions and deposition) and is a complex function of farm management, weather, ambient atmospheric and soil concentrations.

Sensitivity studies of bi-directional CMAQ suggest that soil emission potential (

Γ

s

), a function of fertilizer application rate, depth, atmospheric deposition and nitrification rate, is an important source of NH

3

emission uncertainty (Dennis, et al., 2013).

Therefore, is it important to use the best estimates of fertilizer nitrification and application rate and depth as possible.

Slide7

Implementation in Bidirectional CMAQ

Cooter et al. (2012)

Slide8

Simulates C, N, P biogeochemistry for spatial

scales ranging from a single field site to global

gridded domains at a daily time step

Addresses natural as well as intensively

managed terrestrial systems

Widely used and internationally vetted

The Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model

Slide9

The Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model

Slide10

How do you get the initial soil ammonium and pH conditions and the daily fertilizer application and depth to run BIDI?

Slide11

The FEST-C User Interface – facilitates user-generated CMAQ-ready fertilizer input for any gridded domain, grid cell resolution and weather year by creating and running executable scripts.

Slide12

Open Scenario

New Scenario

Copy Scenario

Save Scenario

Delete Scenario

Exit Scenario

Scenario creation requires minimal inputs

Slide13

BELD Data Generation creates a BELD

landuse

coverage matching the domain and grid resolution of the scenario.

Slide14

WRF/CMAQ to EPIC inputs metcro2D and an initial atmospheric deposition estimate as zero, an EPIC default value of .8 ppm or from a previous CMAQ run.

GEOSChem

weather must be processed externally.

Slide15

User can select one, several or all crops

Multiple weather year simulations require only the new

weather data and this step be re-run.

Slide16

FEST-C

Input to CMAQ

Slide17

The system does a reasonable job reproducing regional patterns of reported agricultural fertilizer purchases and use

EPIC Application

Fertilizer Sales

Gronberg

and

Spahr

(2012)

Slide18

Agricultural management information can be produced for various CMAQ domains to address questions of spatial scale

Slide19

…and

for extended periods of

time.

Nitrate fertilizer annual variability can be large and its simulation is critical to the estimation of ecosystem services such as clean water. EPIC facilitates integration across air, land and water media by using WRF driving weather to provide consistent farm management and

biogeochemcial

inputs to other linked models.

There is little annual variability in NH

3

fertilizer applications in the U.S. because farmers lack

a priori

weather and market information at application time.

Slide20

The importance of

interannual

variability for NH

3

emissions lies in

met-driven application timing.

2003

2003

2006

2006

Slide21

The integration of agricultural land management information with a bi-directional regional air quality modeling approach improves estimates of atmospheric deposition and particulate matter.

Speciation Trends Network NO

3

-

comparison

(Bash et al., 2013)

Slide22

Future

Coupled Air Quality/Agricultural N Applications for Human and Ecosystem Health

Biofuels

(ongoing)

Goal: Assess air quality and ecosystem service responses to land use and land management change associated with biofuel production

Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia (GOM)

(ongoing)

Goal: Reduce the GOM hypoxic zone extent through identification of alternative land use/land management options that could moderate nutrient loadings to the Mississippi watershed (include additional water model linkage).

Agricultural soil N

2

O emissions

(ongoing)

Goal: Develop a better understanding of regional N

2

O emissions from agricultural soils, improve N

2

O emission inventories and identify potential mitigation strategies.

Climate

Change

(planned)

Goal: Explore joint air quality, water quantity and water quality implications of future climate change.

Slide23

Public release of the interface will happen at CMASFEST-C currently supports both NCC and UNC computer systems.

There will be a poster and a terminal set up for folks to try out the interface at CMAS

There will be a web page on the CMAS site for FEST-C that includes download and installation instructions and system documentation.

Slide24

Questions?

Ellen Cooter

U.S. EPA, National Exposure Research Lab, Research Triangle Park, NC

<cooter.ellen@epa.gov>