The ability of process-based biogeochemical models in estimating the gross primary productivity (GPP) of alpine vegetation is largely hampered by the poor representation of phenology and insufficient calibration of model parameters. The development of remote sensing technology and the eddy covariance (EC) technique has made it possible to overcome this dilemma. In this study, we have incorporated remotely sensed phenology into the Biome-BGC model and calibrated its parameters to improve the modeling of GPP of alpine grasslands on the Tibetan Plateau (TP). Specifically, we first used the remotely sensed phenology to modify the original meteorological-based phenology module in the Biome-BGC to better prescribe the phenological states within the model. Then, based on the GPP derived from EC measurements, we combined the global sensitivity analysis method and the simulated annealing optimization algorithm to effectively calibrate the ecophysiological parameters of the Biome-BGC model. Finally, we simulated the GPP of alpine grasslands on the TP from 1982 to 2015 based on the Biome-BGC model after a phenology module modification and parameter calibration. The results indicate that the improved Biome-BGC model effectively overcomes the limitations of the original Biome-BGC model and is able to reproduce the seasonal dynamics and magnitude of GPP in alpine grasslands. Meanwhile, the simulated results also reveal that the GPP of alpine grasslands on the TP has increased significantly from 1982 to 2015 and shows a large spatial heterogeneity, with a mean of 289.8 gC/m²/yr or 305.8 TgC/yr. Our study demonstrates that the incorporation of remotely sensed phenology into the Biome-BGC model and the use of EC measurements to calibrate model parameters can effectively overcome the limitations of its application in alpine grassland ecosystems, which is important for detecting trends in vegetation productivity. This approach could also be upscaled to regional and global scales.

Turbidity, relating to underwater light attenuation, is an important optical parameter for water quality evaluation. Satellite estimation of turbidity in alpine rivers is challenging for common ocean color retrieval models due to the differences in optical properties of the water bodies. In this study, we present a simple two-band semi-analytical turbidity (2BSAT) retrieval model for estimating turbidity in five alpine rivers with varying turbidity from 1.01 to 284 NTU. The model was calibrated and validated, respectively, while using one calibration dataset that was obtained from the Three Parallel Rivers basin and two independent validation datasets that were obtained from the Kaidu River basin and the Yarlung Zangbo River basin. The results show that the model has excellent performance in deriving turbidity in alpine rivers. We verified the consistency of the simulated reflectance and satellite-based reflectance and calibrated the 2BSAT model for the specified bands of high spatial resolution satellites in order to achieve the goal of remote sensing monitoring. It is concluded that the model can be used for the quantitative monitoring of turbidity in alpine rivers using satellite images. Based on the model, we used the Sentinel-2 images from one year to identify the seasonal patterns of turbidity of five alpine rivers and the Landsat series images from 1989 to 2018 to analyze the turbidity variation trends of these rivers. The results indicate that the turbidity of these alpine rivers usually presents the highest level in summer, followed by spring and autumn, and the lowest in winter. Meanwhile, the variation trends of turbidity over the past 30 years present distinctly different characteristics in the five rivers.