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Modeling soil functions

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4/24/2019 Bonares

Soils ful l a series of di erent, important functions in our environment. They are
not only the fundament of agricultural plant production, they also precipitation
lter for clear drinking water, and in uence climate by storing carbon. In addition,
they store water to prevent us from more frequent oods and o er a habitat for an
enormous diversity of organisms. All these functions are a result of interactions
between physical, chemical and biological processes within soils. These processes
und their interactions need to be understood rst in order to predict and optimize
e ects from land use on soil functions. The challenge is not only the complexity of
the processes - processes may vary in di erent soils on various sights – but also
the fact that soils are simply not the same.
 
The BonaRes Centre develops new system-oriented model concepts which will be
able to display soils as complex systems.
 
A rst step is the analysis of existing knowledge on soil processes and their
interactions. Therefore, a meta-analysis of existing literature has been organized
which is open to participation for all soil scientists. A corresponding infrastructure
will be provided via a Web Portal. Results are then available for all parties straight
away. At the same time, functional soil characteristics are being identi ed based on
meta-analysis. Those provide substantial information on the evaluation of various
soil functions and therefore can be used as indicators. The description of soil as a
system is made by characteristic, site-based speci cation of functional
characteristics and their interactions. This way, the dynamics of soil functions can
be described as response to external disturbance, just like critical limits for stability
and resilience. Measures for land use and their consequences on soil functions are
therefore rated. The concept provides also valuable information on dynamics of soil
characteristics for a wide range of existing soil process models (water dynamic,
turnover, etc.) where those soil characteristics are generally used as static base for
parameterizing.
 
Contact:       Hans-Jörg Vogel (mailto:hans-joerg.vogel@ufz.de)

(https://www.bmbf.de/)

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