The Soil Submodel of the ITE (Edinburgh) Forest and Hurley Pasture Models

Abstract

The ITE (Edinburgh) Forest (EF) and Hurley Pasture (HP) models combine physiologically-based treatments of carbon, nitrogen and water dynamics in plants with a functional-compartment treatment of soil organic matter turnover. They are intended to be investigative tools, capable of answering questions about changing dynamics in changing environments, and to that end they were originally constructed to capture as much as possible of the plant physiology which dominates nutrient cycling in unamended ecosystems (Johnson & Thornley, 1985; Thornley, 1972, 1981, 1991; Thornley & Verberne, 1989). Soil processes were treated very simply at first, the soil submodel becoming more complex as the focus shifted to include systems receiving organic and mineral inputs (Thornley & Cannell, 1992).