This version of ORCHIDEE has been used in a paper entitled: "Enhanced prescription of soil organic and mineral content in the ORCHIDEE LSM to better simulate soil temperatures: application at nine high-latitude GEM and FLUXNET sites" by Amélie Cuynet, Elodie Salmon and Catherine Ottlé

Abstract

During the last two decades, multiple studies have shown the importance of accounting for the organic matter (OM) content in soils to determine their thermal and hydrological properties in land surface models (LSMs). This is particularly necessary in the Arctic region, where it is common to find rich organic soils. Most LSMs include parameterisations that rely on the estimated OM content in the soil to simulate the soil thermal and hydrological behaviour, but they generally remain quite simple. Recently, the accuracy and the spatial resolution of global soil data have rapidly evolved, providing useful inputs to better determine soil composition and therefore its physical properties. This study aims at refining the prescription of soil organic and mineral content and parameterisations of heat capacity, thermal conductivity and porosity in the ORCHIDEE LSM by using data provided by the global database SoilGrids? 250m v2.0. The model’s performance is evaluated at multiple Arctic sites, in comparison to two previous model versions: a first one which does not account for OM effects on thermal properties (Bulk version), and a second one for which the OM content was accounted for but very simply prescribed. Results indicate that, accounting for the OM content in the modelling of thermal processes generally improved the simulation of soil temperatures, and that the new version generally shows a better accuracy, particularly at greater soil depths. Reductions of the root mean square errors are up to 25% for some sites compared to the Bulk version, particularly during the snow-free summer months. These results suggest that high-resolution soil organic data such as those provided by the SoilGrids? dataset is very valuable to improve the modelling of soil temperature in carbon-rich soils.

Code Access

See the version on the web interface here: ​https://forge.ipsl.fr/orchidee/browser/branches/publications/ORCHIDEE_3_NewDisC_r8617

Extract it on a terminal as follows, type anonymous as password:

svn co --username anonymous svn://forge.ipsl.fr/orchidee/branches/publications/ORCHIDEE_3_NewDisC_r8617

Metadata

DOI	​https://doi.org/10.14768/3b1dc41a-0c9e-4292-8ea2-d2dac6a10c29
Creator	Amélie CUYNET
Affiliation	LSCE, CNRS
Title	Enhanced prescription of soil organic and mineral content in the ORCHIDEE LSM to better simulate soil temperatures: application at nine high-latitude GEM and FLUXNET sites
Publisher	Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences
PublicationYear	2025
ResourceType	Software
Rights	This software is distributed under the CeCILL license
rightsURI	​http://www.cecill.info/
Subject	Land surface model, soil thermal properties, soil organic carbon and mineral content
DataManager	TO ADD
DataCurator	TO ADD
ContactPerson	Catherine Ottlé (LSCE/CNRS)
FundingReference	TO ADD