MAGEC

Modelling Aroecosystems under Global Environmental Change

Co-ordinator : Dr.Pete Smith

Agroecosystems cover over 51% of the land area of the European Union and so form a vital component of any future prediction of global change impact at the European level. This project will provide modules of soil / plant interactions in agroecosystems to contribute to patch (< 0.1km) and regional scale (10-100km) modelling frameworks already under development within the EU-TERI programme. The objectives are:

• to evaluate to process descriptions used by leading agroecosystem soil and plant models
• to use the best process descriptions to formulate new agroecosystem modulesappropriate for use in patch and regional scale modelling frameworks developed elsewhere within EU-TERI
• to test the accuracy and precision of the new soil and plant modules
• to incorporate the agroecosystem modules into existing patch / regional scale modelling frameworks
• to test the performance of the coupled soil / plant agroecosystem modules in patch / regional scale modelling frameworks
• to contribute an agroecosystem module to a modelling tool under development elsewhere that will allow policy makers in the EU and individual governments to study the environmental impacts of land-use and climate change and examine scenarios for mitigation.

MAGEC will provide modules of the soil / plant system predicting agroecosystem CO2 , water and energy fluxes covering the subsystems: vegetation physiology and phenology, and detritus and SOM dynamics.

A comparison with the ETEMA modelling framework reveals that MAGEC provides a description of processes directly analogous to those provided by ETEMA for natural ecosystems, but MAGEC describes these for agroecosystems

contact :

Dr.Pete Smith
Soil Science Department
IACR-Rothamsted
Harpenden, Herts.
AL5 2JQ,
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 1582 763 133 (x2110)
Fax: +44 1582 760 981
pete.smith@bbsrc.ac.uk

web site :