A functional test platform for the Community Land Model

The realistic representation of key biogeophysical and biogeochemical functions is the fundamental of process-based ecosystem models. A functional test platform is designed to create direct linkages between site measurements and the process-based ecosystem model within the Community Earth System Models (CESM). The platform consists of three major parts: 1) interactive user interfaces, 2) functional test models and 3) observational datasets. It provides much needed integration interfaces for both field experimentalists and ecosystem modelers to improve the model's representation of ecosystem processes within the CESM framework without large software overhead.