Land-Air Parameterisation Scheme (LAPS): A tool for use in agrometeorological modelling

Abstract

The land surface scheme LAPS (Land Air Parameterisation Scheme) has been developing since 1996. Its first version was comprehensively elaborated in "Global and Planetary Change" (Mihailovic, 1996). After that, LAPS was intensively tested and calibrated using a vast number of data for comparison versus one point and 3-D simulations. Recently, we have focused on the parameterisation points potentially providing conditions that LAPS can be used in both long-term climate simulations, shortterm weather forecasting applications and also in ecosystem, air pollution, chemical, crop, groundwater, regional-scale hydrological budgets, partitioning of annual carbon fluxes and soil contaminant modelling. Here we shortly elaborate the main features of this scheme that includes modelling the interaction of the land surface and the atmosphere, under processes divided into three sections: subsurface thermal and hydraulic processes, bare soil transfer processes and canopy transfer processes. They are: interaction of vegetation with radiation, evaporation from bare soil, evapotranspiration including transpiration and evaporation of intercepted water and dew, conduction of soil water through the vegetation layer, vertical water movement in the soil, surface and subsurface runoff, heat conduction in the soil and momentum transport within and above the vegetation. This scheme can be used as a useful toll for different purposes in agricultural science and practice. © 2009 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.