An ecologist’s approach to Earth system modeling: Can nighttime conductance be simulated?

Knowing how to engage with Earth system models (ESMs) is a significant challenge for ecologists because representation of processes can be unclear and code bases are large. Yet ESMs include complex representations of terrestrial processes, and would benefit from greater engagement from the ecological community. Here, we present one example of how ecologists used an ESM to explore different representations of nighttime stomatal conductance. We discovered that the representation considerably influences transpiration, GPP, and hydrology. In addition to determining the model sensitivity, this allowed us to develop additional hypotheses about nighttime and minimum conductance to test in the field.