EDmodel/ED2

question about unit in reproduction.f90

Lo-hatch opened this issue · 3 comments

the calculation of nplant of new recruitment cohort is as:
rectest%nplant = csite%repro(ipft,ipa) / biomass
In my opinion, the units of "repro" and "biomass" are "kgC m-2 polygon yr-1" and "kgC plant-1",
so the unit of "nplant" is "plant m-2 polygon".
However, the unit of "NPLANT" in ED should always be "plant m-2 patch" ?
Is that a mistake or I misunderstand the units of these variables?

The link is the relevant code block:
https://github.com/EDmodel/ED2/blob/master/ED/src/dynamics/reproduction.f90#:~:text=rectest%25nplant,rectest%25bstorage)

As you note, csite%repro(ipft,ipa) is indexed by PFT and patch. Thus it has units "kgC m-2 patch yr-1" not "kgC m-2 polygon yr-1"

Just for future reference, if a patch-level variable (csite%variable(...,ipa)) has m-2 in its units, then you can always assume that it is "m-2(patch)".

The only exception is csite%area(ipa), which has units of m2(patch) m-2(site). Likewise, cpoly%area(isi) has units of m2(site) m-2(polygon).

@mdietze @mpaiao Thank you very much! I misunderstood the unit of repro.