Complexity In Microbial Metabolic Processes In Soil Nitrogen Modeling: A Case For Model Averaging

With increasing concerns over environmental problems caused by human disturbances, accurate and reliable predictions of nutrient cycling are essential for sustainable resource management practices. In the last few decades, much effort has been invested in developing biogeochem-ical models with different complexity that capture nutrient cycling across the scales (Li et al. 1992; Parton et al. 2001; Maggi et al. 2008). Regardless of the detail at which the chemical, biological and physical processes are taken into account, all these models are, in the best case, selective mathematical approximations of processes that are essentially complex. Choosing a level of complexity has been a routine concern by biogeochemical modelers (e.g. Johnson and Omland 2004; Homann et al. 2000) as Biogeochemists have usually struggled to decide what level of complexity