Part 11: Inventory Initialization

FATES supports several initialization modes.

Restart Initialization

Continue from a previous simulation.

Requires:

Restart files

Start from an empty landscape.

Useful when:

No inventory data are available
Long spinup simulations are required

Initialize the simulation using field inventory data.

This starts the simulation with a realistic forest structure already present.

Inventory initialization requires:

Patch file (.pss)
Cohort file (.css)
Control file

The inventory files describe:

Defines:

Patch ages
Patch areas
Disturbance history

Defines:

Tree sizes
Tree densities
Species composition

Defines:

Location of inventory files
Site information

The tutorial inventory setup uses:

vi $VSC_SCRATCH/cesm/inventory/fates_bci_jra_inventory_ctrl

Check that the paths point to your inventory files.

Replace any hardcoded VSC numbers with your own.

If inventory initialization is unavailable:

use_fates_inventory_init = .false.

This starts the simulation from bare ground.

Inventory initialization is preferred whenever high-quality inventory data are available.

To use your own inventory data, field observations must be converted into FATES inventory files.

Guidance is available here:

https://fates-users-guide.readthedocs.io/projects/tutorial/en/latest/inventory_data.html

This conversion step is site-specific and usually requires:

Species information
DBH measurements
Tree densities
Plot dimensions