How important is the description of soil unsaturated hydraulic conductivity values for simulating soil saturation level, drainage and pasture yield?

Accurate simulation of soil water dynamics is a key factor when using agricultural models for guiding management decisions. However, the determination of soil hydraulic properties, especially unsaturated hydraulic conductivity, is challenging and measured data are scarce. We investigated the use of APSIM (Agricultural Production Simulation Model) with SWIM3 as the water module, based on Richards equation and a bimodal pore system, to determine likely ranges of the hydraulic conductivity at field capacity (K-10; assumed at a matric potential of −10 kPa) for soils representing different drainage characteristics. Hydraulic conductivity measurements of soils with contrasting soil drainage characteristics and values for K-10 were extracted from New Zealand’s national soil database. The K-10 values were then varied in a sensitivity analysis from 0.02 to 5 mm d−1 for well-drained soils, from 0.02 to 1 mm d−1 for moderately well-drained soils, and from 0.008 to 0.25 mm d−1 for poorly drained soils. The value of K-10 had a large effect on the time it took for the soil to drain from saturation to field capacity. In contrast, the saturated hydraulic conductivity value had little effect. Simulations were then run over 20 years using two climatic conditions, either a general climate station for all seven different soils, or site-specific climate stations. Two values for K-10 were used, either the APSIM default value, or the soil-specific measured K-10. The monthly average soil saturation level simulated with the latter has a better correspondence with the morphology of the seven soils. Finally, the effect of K-10 on drainage and pasture yield was investigated. Total annual drainage was only slightly affected by the choice of K-10, but pasture yield varied substantially.Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Endeavour Fund, through the Manaaki Whenua-led ‘Next Generation S-map’ research programme, C09X161

Simulating water and nitrogen runoff with APSIM

To determine the impact of potential reductions of terrain-targeted nitrogen (N) fertilisation rates on N losses a simulation study was carried out using the Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM). To simulate N runoff a simple approach was used, in which runoff is based on the N concentration in the soil solution and an extraction coefficient. Firstly, APSIM parameters that have the largest effect on runoff of water and N were determined for terrains with different slopes for a poorly drained silt loam. A sensitivity analysis was then conducted to assess the effect of soil hydraulic properties and soil organic carbon content on runoff losses. Finally, APSIM was set up to simulate pasture production and water and N dynamics (including pasture N uptake, leaching and N runoff) for a farm on rolling hills in South Canterbury, New Zealand. Two different fertilisation approaches were used, either scheduled or based on the aboveground N concentration of the pasture. For the poorly drained silt loam, the rainfall intensity and the surface conductance had the highest effect on the amount of water lost by runoff. Soil hydraulic conductivity at saturation and field capacity, as well as plant available water content also controlled runoff of water and N, while the organic carbon content of the topsoil had less effect on N runoff. Both the extraction coefficient and the depth considered to exchange N with the runoff water affected the amount of N lost via runoff. Using the aboveground pasture N concentration prior to fertilisation had positive effects on pasture yield and reduced N runoff losses

Modeling Denitrification : Can We Report What We Don't Know?

Funding Information: This study is the products of a workshop funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the research unit DFG‐FOR 2337: Denitrification in Agricultural Soils: Integrated Control and Modelling at Various Scales (DASIM), and by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the “Make our Planet Great Again—German Research Initiative”, Grant 306060, implemented by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). This work was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme project VERIFY (grant agreement no. 776810). We would like to thank the contribution of all workshop participants of the II. DASIM Modeler Workshop. Publisher Copyright: © 2023. The Authors.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Graph Data-Models and Semantic Web Technologies in Scholarly Digital Editing

This volume is based on the selected papers presented at the Workshop on Scholarly Digital Editions, Graph Data-Models and Semantic Web Technologies, held at the Uni- versity of Lausanne in June 2019. The Workshop was organized by Elena Spadini (University of Lausanne) and Francesca Tomasi (University of Bologna), and spon- sored by the Swiss National Science Foundation through a Scientific Exchange grant, and by the Centre de recherche sur les lettres romandes of the University of Lausanne. The Workshop comprised two full days of vibrant discussions among the invited speakers, the authors of the selected papers, and other participants.1 The acceptance rate following the open call for papers was around 60%. All authors – both selected and invited speakers – were asked to provide a short paper two months before the Workshop. The authors were then paired up, and each pair exchanged papers. Paired authors prepared questions for one another, which were to be addressed during the talks at the Workshop; in this way, conversations started well before the Workshop itself. After the Workshop, the papers underwent a second round of peer-review before inclusion in this volume. This time, the relevance of the papers was not under discus- sion, but reviewers were asked to appraise specific aspects of each contribution, such as its originality or level of innovation, its methodological accuracy and knowledge of the literature, as well as more formal parameters such as completeness, clarity, and coherence. The bibliography of all of the papers is collected in the public Zotero group library GraphSDE20192, which has been used to generate the reference list for each contribution in this volume. The invited speakers came from a wide range of backgrounds (academic, commer- cial, and research institutions) and represented the different actors involved in the remediation of our cultural heritage in the form of graphs and/or in a semantic web en- vironment. Georg Vogeler (University of Graz) and Ronald Haentjens Dekker (Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, Humanities Cluster) brought the Digital Humanities research perspective; the work of Hans Cools and Roberta Laura Padlina (University of Basel, National Infrastructure for Editions), as well as of Tobias Schweizer and Sepi- deh Alassi (University of Basel, Digital Humanities Lab), focused on infrastructural challenges and the development of conceptual and software frameworks to support re- searchers’ needs; Michele Pasin’s contribution (Digital Science, Springer Nature) was informed by his experiences in both academic research, and in commercial technology companies that provide services for the scientific community. The Workshop featured not only the papers of the selected authors and of the invited speakers, but also moments of discussion between interested participants. In addition to the common Q&A time, during the second day one entire session was allocated to working groups delving into topics that had emerged during the Workshop. Four working groups were created, with four to seven participants each, and each group presented a short report at the end of the session. Four themes were discussed: enhancing TEI from documents to data; ontologies for the Humanities; tools and infrastructures; and textual criticism. All of these themes are represented in this volume. The Workshop would not have been of such high quality without the support of the members of its scientific committee: Gioele Barabucci, Fabio Ciotti, Claire Clivaz, Marion Rivoal, Greta Franzini, Simon Gabay, Daniel Maggetti, Frederike Neuber, Elena Pierazzo, Davide Picca, Michael Piotrowski, Matteo Romanello, Maïeul Rouquette, Elena Spadini, Francesca Tomasi, Aris Xanthos – and, of course, the support of all the colleagues and administrative staff in Lausanne, who helped the Workshop to become a reality. The final versions of these papers underwent a single-blind peer review process. We want to thank the reviewers: Helena Bermudez Sabel, Arianna Ciula, Marilena Daquino, Richard Hadden, Daniel Jeller, Tiziana Mancinelli, Davide Picca, Michael Piotrowski, Patrick Sahle, Raffaele Viglianti, Joris van Zundert, and others who preferred not to be named personally. Your input enhanced the quality of the volume significantly! It is sad news that Hans Cools passed away during the production of the volume. We are proud to document a recent state of his work and will miss him and his ability to implement the vision of a digital scholarly edition based on graph data-models and semantic web technologies. The production of the volume would not have been possible without the thorough copy-editing and proof reading by Lucy Emmerson and the support of the IDE team, in particular Bernhard Assmann, the TeX-master himself. This volume is sponsored by the University of Bologna and by the University of Lausanne. Bologna, Lausanne, Graz, July 2021 Francesca Tomasi, Elena Spadini, Georg Vogele