Quantifying and simulating carbon and nitrogen mineralization from diverse exogenous organic matters

The potential contributions of exogenous organic matters (EOMs) to soil C and mineral N supply depend on their mineralization, which can be assessed in laboratory incubations. Such incubations are essential calibrate decomposition models, because not all EOMs tested the field. However, EOM resource-intensive. Therefore, easily measurable characteristics that useful predict behaviour needed. We quantified mineralization during incubation 663 from five groups (animal manures, composts, sewage sludges, digestates others). This represents one largest diversified set varied widely between within subgroups. simulated with a simple generic model. Three calibration methods were compared. Individual model yielded good performances, while use unique parameter per subgroup decreased performance, two estimate parameters gave an intermediate performance (average RMSE-C values 32, 99 65 mg g−1 added average RMSE-N 50, 126 110 N, respectively). Because variability, individual based remains recommended method for predicting most accurately EOMs. alternative sufficient simulation without data obtain reasonable performances.