I2. Integrated Land Crop model

This integrated version combines the Integrated Land Water model (I1) with the Crop model (with multicropping) to produce spatially-distributed crop dynamics.

Given the high modularity of this model, it required few additional specifications and no mechanisms not described in either Land Water or Crop models. The few adjustments involve:

1. accounting crops as ecological components, and
2. further specifying the inputs related to crop choice and management, which are to be eventually covered by the remaining submodels (e.g., Household Demography).

Crops as ecological community components

Crops growing in a land unit are considered (as a whole) as an extra component of the unit's ecological community and cover type. As the consequence of anthropic action, crops take preference over grass, brush and wood components, while surface water continues to have preference over all. Note that some land unit variables (e.g., run-off curve number, albedo) used in the Land Water model are affected by all ecological components present.

Crop choice and management

This model represents crop choice and management with three variables:

• crop_selection: a list of strings with the names of crops to be cultivated, following the names in cropTable.csv. Here, this is a global parameter, but it should eventually be converted into land unit and household variables, after the integration with other submodels.

• crop_intensity: a single number (float) representing the percentage of land units to be used for crop cultivation. Again, this remains a global parameter in this version only, due to the lack of other submodels.

• crop_frequency: a list of numbers (floats) representing the percentage of crop_intensity that is assigned to each crop. While it could be handled in the same way as the other two variables (i.e. global parameters), we have chosen to keep it as a fixed variable at the level of land units, in order to allow for certain experiments.

Link to file

Link to file