Prospects and challenges of simulating organic matter turnover and stabilization in soil systems

Understanding the turnover and stabilization of soil organic matter (SOM) is the key to highly productive agriculture and to climate change mitigation. Understanding and predicting biogeochemical matter and energy flows in soil systems is challenging due to persisting knowledge gaps regarding biological and energetic controls of SOM turnover and limited knowledge integration of informative data with process-based models. We present modeling concepts of microbially explicit soil organic matter models and shed light on integrating trait-based ecological frameworks in process-based models and the use of advanced data-model fusion approaches. We highlight some insights from applying process-based models and challenges we need to address to acquire robust predictions.