Soil health modelling with APSIM

<p dir="ltr">Soil health is an integrative concept open to various definitions, e.g., “the continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals, and humans” (USDA 2012). It is of increasing interest to farmers and growers seeking to improve the delivery of ecosystem services from soils and ensure that they are resilient to disturbance and fit for future use. Recent promotion of the regenerative agricultural paradigm has soil health as one of its core principles and it is in the context of a research project studying RegenAg practises that we sought to utilise the AgPasture model within the APSIM framework to explore the simulation of soil health attributes to support decision making by pastoral farmers.</p><p dir="ltr">There are two aspects to consider: (1) how the metrics currently used for soil health assessment might translate into explicit and implicit model input parameters; and (2) how the available output parameters might be used as collective indictors of ecosystem service provision.</p>