Modelling field scale spatial variation in water run-off, soil moisture, N2O emissions and herbage biomass of a grazed pasture using the SPACSYS model.

In this study, we evaluated the ability of the SPACSYS model to simulate water run-off, soil moisture, N 2 O fluxes and grass growth using data generated from a field of the North Wyke Farm Platform. The field-scale model is adapted via a linked and grid-based approach (grid-to-grid) to account for not only temporal dynamics but also the within-field spatial variation in these key ecosystem indicators. Spatial variability in nutrient and water presence at the field-scale is a key source of uncertainty when quantifying nutrient cycling and water movement in an agricultural system. Results demonstrated that the new spatially distributed version of SPACSYS provided a worthy improvement in accuracy over the standard (single-point) version for biomass productivity. No difference in model prediction performance was observed for water run-off, reflecting the closed-system nature of this variable. Similarly, no difference in model prediction performance was found for N 2 O fluxes, but here the N 2 O predictions were noticeably poor in both cases. Further developmental work, informed by this study's findings, is proposed to improve model predictions for N 2 O. Soil moisture results with the spatially distributed version appeared promising but this promise could not be objectively verified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]