Mathematical models are valuable tools for improving our understanding of soil biogeochemical processes and for predicting soil responses to changes in agricultural, climate, and other environmental drivers. Similar to experimental research, many soil models operate on a ‘bulk soil’ level (often interpreted at the field/landscape scale) representing important soil C and nutrient pools (such as complex, dissolved or microbial C and N, extracellular enzymes, etc) in an aggregated way.

In this session we bring together researchers working on soil biogeochemical models with a focus on process-based approaches. The session aims at understanding the emergent behavior of these models across different scales, as well as feedbacks between physical and biological soil processes. We also are interested in model-data comparisons and testing of different concepts with experimental data from the micro to the macro scales We aim to discuss possibilities of combining different approaches, considering small scale processes that relate soil organic matter transformations to soil structure, transport and/or environmental pulses, and developing towards self-consistent models of soil cover that can be used for predictive purposes.