Simulated historical runoff in millimeters (1971-2000 average) for the Pacific Northwest, USA

For his MS thesis, Brendan Rogers used the vegetation model MC1 to simulate vegetation dynamics, associated carbon and nitrogen cycle, water budget and wild fire impacts across the western 2/3 of the states of Oregon and Washington using climate input data from the PRISM group (Chris Daly, OSU) at a 30arc second (800m) spatial grain. The model was run assuming that nitrogen demand from the plants was always met so that the nitrogen concentrations in various plant parts never dropped below their minimum reported values. A CO2 enhancement effect increased productivity and water use efficiency as the atmospheric CO2 concentration increased.