Lunch seminar: A general framework for predicting and understanding soil organic matter dynamics

In this presentation, I will introduce an effort to generalize models of SOM dynamics with the aim to extract common concepts and principles among models. I will also introduce a set of metrics to assess system-level properties among models.These metrics include: SOM age, transit time, and entropy. SOM age is proposed as a meaningful metric to assess persistence of carbon and nutrients, and SOM transit time as a metric to assess time-scales of carbon sequestration in soils.

SOM entropy is introduced as a metric to assess complexity of models, and as a tool for parsimonious model selection. Overall, these metrics contribute to system-level understanding of the SOM system.