Download Review of the new Soil component in APSIM

Review of the new Soil component in APSIM
Greg McLean & Neal Dalgliesh
This component is an improvement on the current release and has a number of advantages.
The ability to include SWIM is perhaps one that will be most appreciated by those in the soils
world.
The reviewers would like to make the following comments:
The component includes Initial Water and an Initial Nitrogen components. The
nitrogen component includes layered soil water, oc and a number of other fields that are not
related to N, some of which appear in other components. For example organic carbon
appears in init N and in the soil organic component. If both have values, which is used in the
simulation? As both init N and water are needed for a simulation, the reviewers suggest that
consideration be made to have an initial soil conditions component, combining both water
and N and nothing else (on the one page). The graphs are very good and should be
retained, and tables to enter values by depth provided in this component, as well as the
current methods of describing initial soil conditions.
In the water component, the crop/soil values are listed to the right of the soil
characterisation as is currently the case, and also included as sub-components. While this is
a minor matter, the reviewers thought that this may be redundant and confusing. If more
colour contrast could be built into the different crop listings, that may make it easier to
differentiate between crops.
The Soilwat component includes the variable names for the required module
parameters. Would it be possible to have a tooltip explanation of what the values relate to?
For instance, an brief note on what Cona and U are.
The SoilOrganicMatter component has a good graph and calculated values for the
soil carbon. Could an explanation of the equations to calculate these values be provided?
OC is already indicated in the lab section-when and where does the SoilOrganicmatter
component come into play-is it for general simulation use or for more detailed analysis of
carbon and thus only used by a small number of users ie does it need to be a major
component on the directory structure?
Could better names for modules such as Lab and Soilwat be canvassed?
Suggestions might include Analysis for Lab?
Overall an improvement on the current component.