Mapped Atmosphere-Plant-Soil System Study

MAPSS (Mapped Atmosphere-Plant-Soil System) is a landscape- to global-scale vegetation distribution model that was developed to simulate the potential biosphere impacts and biosphere-atmosphere feedbacks from climatic change. Model output from MAPSS has been used extensively in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) regional and global assessments of climate change impacts on vegetation and in several other projects.

Vegetation models developed by the MAPSS team are being continually enhanced. MAPSS was originally a steady-state biogeography model, able to simulate a map of potential natural vegetation under a long-term average climate. Emerging technology couples the biogeographical rule base of MAPSS with two different ecosystem nutrient cycling models and a process-based fire model in order to simulate the spatially explicit dynamics of vegetation at landscape to global scales under both stable and changing climates. These new dynamic vegetation models, MC and BIOMAP, will be useful for exploring management options at all scales from landscape to regional, national, and global.

MAPSS Simulated Vegetation Distribution - Current