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Modeling Plant Competition with the GAPS Object‐Oriented Dynamic Simulation Model
Author(s) -
Rossiter David G.,
Riha Susan J.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
agronomy journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.752
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1435-0645
pISSN - 0002-1962
DOI - 10.2134/agronj1999.915773x
Subject(s) - interception , competition (biology) , leaf area index , competition model , simulation modeling , environmental science , computer science , agricultural engineering , ecology , engineering , mathematics , biology , mathematical economics , economics , microeconomics , profit (economics)
Modeling interspecies competition is a natural application for dynamic simulation models of agricultural systems. We extended a dynamic simulation model of the soil–plant–atmosphere system, GAPS, to include the case where multiple plant species are growing in competition. The competition model was implemented as an object hierarchy that exchanges information with a crop model hierarchy by means of access procedures. Crop models, atmospheric procedures, and soil–plant water interface procedures required minimal change in order to support the competition model. We implemented two competition models: modified ALMANAC and winner‐takes‐all. The modified ALMANAC model requires that crop models of competing plants simulate leaf area index, single‐crop light interception, and canopy height. Using this information, the ALMANAC model partitions solar radiation among the competitors. GAPS is written in the object‐oriented language Turbo Pascal.