The Community Land Model is the land model for the Community Earth System Model (CESM) and the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM).

It is a collaborative project between scientists in the Terrestrial Sciences Section (TSS) and the Climate and Global Dynamics Division (CGD) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the CESM Land Model Working Group. Other principal working groups that also contribute to the CLM are Biogeochemistry, Paleoclimate, and Climate Change and Assessment.

The model formalizes and quantifies concepts of ecological climatology. Ecological climatology is an interdisciplinary framework to understand how natural and human changes in vegetation affect climate. It examines the physical, chemical, and biological processes by which terrestrial ecosystems affect and are affected by climate across a variety of spatial and temporal scales. The central theme is that terrestrial ecosystems, through their cycling of energy, water, chemical elements, and trace gases, are important determinants of climate.

Model components consist of: biogeophysics, hydrologic cycle, biogeochemistry and dynamic vegetation.

The land surface is represented by 5 primary sub-grid land cover types (glacier, lake, wetland, urban, vegetated) in each grid cell. The vegetated portion of a grid cell is further divided into patches of plant functional types, each with its own leaf and stem area index and canopy height. Each subgrid land cover type and PFT patch is a separate column for energy and water calculations.

The current version of the Community Land Model is CLM4.0