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SoilGen

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hydrologysoil-physicspedogenesisbiogeochemicalplant-soilcritical-zonesite1D2Dcatchment-n-regional
SoilGen

SoilGen

Peter A. Finke, Ghent University, Department of Geology and Soil Science, Ghent, Belgium

 

Website

https://users.ugent.be/~pfinke/index_files/Page1167.htm

 

Description

SoilGen is a simulation model for the study of pedogenesis. Whereas most soil genetic studies take observations in the present to reconstruct soil development in the past, this model takes an initial soil or parent material as starting point and calculates the effect of various boundary conditions over long periods on soil development. Thus, Jenny’s paradigm is followed, which states that the soil we observe today is a function of the “factors of soil formation” CLORPT (CLimate, Organisms, Relief, Parent material and Time). All these factors are treated as boundary - or initial conditions whereas the soil forming processes are part of the simulation model. Essentially, SoilGen is a 1-D solute transport model based on LEACHM that additionally simulates heat flow, physical and chemical weathering, bioturbation, clay migration, various chemical equilibriums, cation exchange and plant uptake of water and ions. Time steps vary between 10-10 and 10-3 year; the temporal extent is currently limited to 15000 years. The C-cycle is simulated per soil compartment according to the principles of RothC26.3.

Soil erosion and deposition as well as agricultural activities (plowing intensity, plowing deph, fertilizing, slash and burn) are input.

Currently distributed version: SoilGen2.16. New (extended) version to be released 2nd half 2014.

Download page at http://users.ugent.be/~pfinke/index_files/Page1167.htm

User manual and model description are at https://users.ugent.be/~pfinke/SoilGen/SoilGen2.26_UserManual.pdf

 

Screen shots

 

Scientific articles

  1. Finke, P.A. and J. Hutson. 2008. Modelling soil genesis in calcareous löss. Geoderma 145 : 462-479. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2008.01.017
  2. Finke, P.A, 2012. Modeling the genesis of Luvisols as a function of topographic position in loess parent material. Quaternary International  265: 3-17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2011.10.016
  3. Daniela Sauer, Peter A. Finke, Isabelle Schülli-Maurer, Ragnhild Sperstad, Rolf Sørensen, Helge I. Høeg, Karl Stahr. 2012. Testing a soil development model against southern Norway soil chronosequences. Quaternary International 265: 18-31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2011.12.018  
  4. Yu, Y.Y., Finke, P.A, Guo, Z.T, Wu H. B., 2013. Sensitivity analysis and calibration of a soil carbon model (SoilGen2) in two contrasting loess forest soils. Geoscientific Model Development 6, 29-44. www.geosci-model-dev.net/6/29/2013/
  5. Zwertvaegher, Ann, Peter Finke, Philippe De Smedt, Vanessa Gelorini, Marc Van Meirvenne, Machteld Bats, Jeroen De Reu, Marc Antrop, Jean Bourgeois, Philippe De Maeyer, Jacques Verniers, Philippe Crombé. 2013. Spatio-temporal modeling of soil characteristics for soilscape reconstruction. Geoderma 207-208: 166-179. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2013.05.013
  6. Finke, P.A., T. Vanwalleghem, E. Opolot, J. Poesen, J. Deckers. 2013. Estimating the effect of tree uprooting on variation of soil horizon depth by confronting pedogenetic simulations to measurements in a Belgian loess area. Journal of Geophysical Research - Earth Surface 118: (in press). http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jgrf.20153
  7. Opolot  E., Y.Y. Yu and P.A. Finke. in press.  Modeling soil genesis at pedon and landscape scales: achievements and problems. Quaternary International http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618214001074

 

Technical information

Operating system(s): Windows XP and later, 32 bits and 64 bits versions.

Program is compiled under freePascal, thus can also be compiled under Linux and all operating systems supported by Lazarus (see http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/).

Licence: Executable, user manual and a complete set of input files are freely available via the download page: http://users.ugent.be/~pfinke/index_files/Page1167.htm . In collaborative projects source code can be made available.

Output(s): All output files (with one exception) are plain text files.

The table summarizes the major output files and states whether these are always produced or not. All files are plain ASCII-files. The J in the table indicate the years after the start of the simulations.

 

Table 1 Major output files of SoilGen

File

Status

Contents

Log file

Always

Summary of the simulated scenario in terms of used input and produced output

*.tdd

Always

Time-depth diagram data (data from 31-12 of every year per soil compartment) of specific model variables * (see Table 2)

These files can be viewed and saved to bitmaps using external software (TDGraph.exe).

Messages.txt

Conditionally

Error messages during runtime

Dump.txt

Conditionally

Contains state of variables at time of a runtime error, at the start of the last runtime year, and at start of the simulation. This is an ascii-text file, but is not interpretable from a text editor. Instead, re-starting SoilGen will cause detection of this file by the program and allow the user to analyze the state of the variables via a menu-option in the program.

LCJ.out

On request

Yearly output file of the solute transport and chemistry model (LEACHC)

RCJ.out

On request

Yearly output of the C-cycling sub-model

WEJ.out

On request

Yearly output of the weathering sub-model

Continuation files

Always

3 files that record the status at the end of the preceding run:

  • <continue.rec>, a binary file with the complete status of all relevant model variables;
  • <continuePhysicalWeathering.txt> with a specification of the particle size distribution;
  • <continueVanGenuchtenMeasured.txt> with a specification of VanGenuchten parameters that were measured and should remain valid in the continuation run.

 

Table 2 Output variables
All variables per soil compartment (thickness and profile thickness are input) and at 31-12 of each year unless indicated otherwise. DPM=Decomposable Plant Material, RPM=Resistant Plant Material, IOM= Inert Organic Matter, OC=Organic Carbon.

Type

Variable

Dimension

Type

Variable

Dimension

Chemical

Alkalinity

mmol- dm-3

Physical

Clay

mass% fine earth

Ca2+ solution

mmol dm-3 **

Clay

volume%

Mg2+ solution

mmol dm-3 **

Sand

mass% fine earth

Na+ solution

mmol dm-3 **

Silt

mass% fine earth

K+ solution

mmol dm-3 **

RHO

kg dm-3

Al3+ solution

mmol dm-3 **

Clay Dispersion Indicator

-

Cl- solution

mmol dm-3 **

Porosity

volume fraction

SO42- solution

mmol dm-3 **

Theta

cm3 cm-3

CO32- solution

mmol dm-3 **

Potential

kPa

HCO3-solution

mmol dm-3 **

ET

mm

EC

mS m-1

Flux

mm

pH

 

Temperature31-12

ºC

Ca-exch.

mmol+ kg-1 soil

Average Temperature

ºC

Mg-exch.

mmol+ kg-1 soil

 

 

Na-exch.

mmol+ kg-1 soil

Plant related

OC

mass% solid fraction

K-exch.

mmol+ kg-1 soil

DPM *

ton C ha-1

Al-exch.

mmol+ kg-1 soil

RPM *

ton C ha-1

ESP

%

Biomass *

ton C ha-1

SAR

-

Humus *

ton C ha-1

pCO2

bar

IOM *

ton C ha-1

CaCO3

mass fraction

Roots

fraction

CaSO4

mass fraction

 

 

* also in ectorganic matter.

** also as mmol m-2 in ectorganic matter.

 

Export format(s): *.txt, ascii-text. Only <continue.rec> is binary and can only be read by SoilGen itself.

Other information: See the user manual at https://users.ugent.be/~pfinke/SoilGen/SoilGen2.26_UserManual.pdf for detailed description of how to generate model input files using the user interface.

 

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