Calibrating soil carbon model with multiple datasets improves the model’s performance

Article: Calibrating the soil organic carbon model Yasso20 with multiple datasets.

Authors: Viskari, Toni et al.

Publication: Geoscientific Model Development

Year: 2022

Soil carbon models can be used for assessing global soil carbon distributions and changes in carbon stocks. The models’ performances are affected by the data and methods used to calibrate them. In soil carbon modelling, the calibration refers to comparing the values produced by the model to the values of soil carbon measurement datasets.

In this study, the performance of an updated version of soil carbon model Yasso, named Yasso20, was assessed when calibrated with one or with multiple datasets. Yasso20 was also compared to the previous version of the Yasso model. The results demonstrated that the model showed a better global performance, when calibrated with data from multiple different ecosystems. Yasso20 model performed better with the validation data than the previous version of the model.