Summary of the Article:

Introduction to Land Surface Modeling with Crop Representation

The article discusses the incorporation of more explicit representations of land management, such as crop type, planting, harvesting, tillage, fertilization, and irrigation, in Earth System Models. Traditionally, these models have represented the human footprint on the landscape using natural vegetation types, particularly grasses, which resemble many common crops.

The AgroIBIS land surface model is highlighted as a state-of-the-art model that includes options to simulate dynamic vegetation and interactive crop management. The interactive crop management parameterizations from AgroIBIS were coupled to the Community Land Model (CLM) as a proof-of-concept, and later released to the community with subsequent CLM versions (CLM3.5, CLM4CN, CLM4.5BGC, and CLM5).

The goal of incorporating interactive crop management is to improve the CLM's simulated biogeophysics and biogeochemistry, which may lead to better-coupled simulations with the Community Earth System Model (CESM). This, in turn, can help address questions about changing food, energy, and water resources in response to climate, environmental, land use, and land management change.

The crop model within the CLM uses the same physiology as the natural vegetation but with different crop-specific parameter values, phenology, and allocation, as well as fertilizer and irrigation management.