msimmond
commented
4 years ago I could add a check in CALAND() that automates the correction of climate scalars as needed. When running CALAND() with a non-mean carbon input flux, it would compare a change in sign between the mean soil (and veg) c flux and the designated input (mean +/- SD or min/max), and then correct the scalar based on the direction of the switch and whether the scalar is intended to gain/lose carbon.
Update CALAND() to check if the climate scalar causes a change in the sign of the historical unmanaged carbon flux, and correct this accordingly. Climate scalars were pre-processed using caland's mean historical carbon flux inputs, but not with uncertainty bound inputs (mean +/- SD) or the management practice effects, which may inadvertently cause a flip in the sign. Alan checked that the v3.0. management practices don't cause a flip, but some uncertainty combinations do cause a flip in some land categories: "The cases where it does flip are few, and the resulting values are near zero. Managed Delta Cultivated flips the sign with high soil conservation, and non-Delta non-managed Cultivated low c accumulation also flips the sign. There are six forest categories where low c accumulation flips the sign: local_gov in central_vally, delta, deserts, eastside, and state_gov in central valley and delta; but the areas are mostly negligible with a small area ~1400ha in the eastside..differencing mitigates this problem, as the inverted effects are in both the baseline and the alternative. Also, luckily, applying the opposite climate impact (which is small to begin with) to a near-zero accumulation should have a very small effect on absolute outputs also, especially when affected areas are small."