Modelling water and nutrient dynamics in soil-crop systems

Soil-crop-atmosphere interactions play a central role in the multiple functions of rural landscapes. Agro-ecosystem models are increasingly used to support decision making on different scales towards sustainable land use and management.This is accompanied by a demand of model users for model validation to get an idea about the reliability of models. This book contains articles from a workshop on "Modelling water and nutrient dynamics in crop-soil systems". Data sets from lysimeters and experimental fields of multiyear crop rotations were provided for modellers. A unique data set is provided of a 100 year long term field experiment regarding crop yield and organic carbon development under different management systems.

The book includes a detailed description of data sets which can be used by modellers and the papers describe the applications of 18 different modelling approaches describing soil-crop-atmosphere interactions for water, nitrogen and carbon dynamics.

A comparison of the models applied to the same data set is provided which points out similarities and differences in the description of single processes between the model approaches. This gives potential model users and decision makers the opportunity to compare the model outputs and get a closer insight about the applicability and required adaptations for the participating models.