Rothamsted Carbon Model

The Rothamsted Carbon Model (RothC) uses a five pool structure, decomposable plant material (DPM), resistant plant materials (RPM), microbial biomass, humified organic matter, and inert organic matter to assess carbon turnover (Coleman and Jenkinson 1996 Guo et al. 2007). The first four pools decompose by first-order kinetics. The decay rate constants are modified by temperature, soil moisture, and indirectly by clay content. RothC does not include a plant growth sub-module, and therefore NHC inputs must be known, estimated, or calculated by inverse modeling. Skjemstad et al. (2004) tested an approach for populating the different pools based on measured values. 

Figure 3.1 Decomposition and carbon turnover in soil A conceptual diagram summarizing the main elements of the initial Rothamsted carbon model (Jen-kinson 1971). To this we have added other small, but potentially functionally important, compartments the volatile organic carbon and the dissolved organic carbon derived during both decomposition of litter and exudation from plants. An inert organic matter pool is added as this appears in later versions of the Rothamsted model.

S. (1998). Regional estimates of carbon. sequestration potential — linking the Rothamsted carbon model to GIS databases. Biol. Fertil. Soil 27, 236-241. 

From this understanding of the behavior of the SOC pool, models such as Rothamsted (Jenkinson and Rayner, 1977) and Century (Parton et ai, 1993) have been developed that allow results from regional validation studies to be extrapolated to the global scale (Schimel et al, 1994). Such models divide the SOC pool up into three to five pools with turnover times ranging from years to thousands of years, and the sizes of the.se pools for a given. soil texture are determined by climate-driven interactions between plant carbon inputs, nutrients, microbial respiration, and leaching of DOC (Fig. 2). In some cases, the.se models have been tested... 

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