About the CoMSES Model Library more info
Our mission is to help computational modelers at all levels engage in the establishment and adoption of community standards and good practices for developing and sharing computational models. Model authors can freely publish their model source code in the Computational Model Library alongside narrative documentation, open science metadata, and other emerging open science norms that facilitate software citation, reproducibility, interoperability, and reuse. Model authors can also request peer review of their computational models to receive a DOI.
All users of models published in the library must cite model authors when they use and benefit from their code.
Please check out our model publishing tutorial and contact us if you have any questions or concerns about publishing your model(s) in the Computational Model Library.
We also maintain a curated database of over 7500 publications of agent-based and individual based models with additional detailed metadata on availability of code and bibliometric information on the landscape of ABM/IBM publications that we welcome you to explore.
Displaying 1 of 1 results nitrogen fertilization clear search
An agent-based model to simulate field-specific nitrogen fertilizer applications in grasslands
Andrea Kaim Thomas Schmitt Sylvia Helena Annuth Maria Haensel Thomas Koellner | Published Sunday, February 09, 2025Grasslands have a large share of the world’s land cover and their sustainable management is important for the protection and provisioning of grassland ecosystem services. The question of how to manage grassland sustainably is becoming increasingly important, especially in view of climate change, which on the one hand extends the vegetation period (and thus potentially allows use intensification) and on the other hand causes yield losses due to droughts. Fertilization plays an important role in grassland management and decisions are usually made at farm level. Data on fertilizer application rates are crucial for an accurate assessment of the effects of grassland management on ecosystem services. However, these are generally not available on farm/field scale. To close this gap, we present an agent-based model for Fertilization In Grasslands (FertIG). Based on animal, land-use, and cutting data, the model estimates grassland yields and calculates field-specific amounts of applied organic and mineral nitrogen on grassland (and partly cropland). Furthermore, the model considers different legal requirements (including fertilization ordinances) and nutrient trade among farms. FertIG was applied to a grassland-dominated region in Bavaria, Germany comparing the effects of changes in the fertilization ordinance as well as nutrient trade. The results show that the consideration of nutrient trade improves organic fertilizer distribution and leads to slightly lower Nmin applications. On a regional scale, recent legal changes (fertilization ordinance) had limited impacts. Limiting the maximum applicable amount of Norg to 170 kg N/ha fertilized area instead of farm area as of 2020 hardly changed fertilizer application rates. No longer considering application losses in the calculation of fertilizer requirements had the strongest effects, leading to lower supplementary Nmin applications. The model can be applied to other regions in Germany and, with respective adjustments, in Europe. Generally, it allows comparing the effects of policy changes on fertilization management at regional, farm and field scale.