Equifinality in the modelling of ammonia volatilisation from a flooded rice system
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-1-2020
Abstract
Equifinality is the capability of models to produce similar model-output responses. The objective of this study is to use a numerical experimentation to investigate the equifinality of six modules for estimating ammonia (NH3) volatilisation from the floodwater in a rice system. Except for the Chowdary's, all modules can simulate the fluctuating trends of NH3 volatilisation rates. NFLOOD v.1 shows low equifinality to Jayaweera and Mikkelsen's and the regression equations in CERES-Rice, DSSAT-CSM and APSIM-Oryza in estimating the NH3 volatilisation. The equation in APSIM-Oryza has high equifinality to that in CERES-Rice. Both regression equations have low equifinality to the regression equation in DSSAT-CSM. All three regression equations show low equifinality to Jayaweera and Mikkelsen's. Findings in this study are valuable to make an informed model selection, to interpret model-output responses critically and to improve an existing model by adopting an alternative module without using experimental data explicitly.
Keywords
Equifinality, Sensitivity analysis, Model evaluation, Ammonia volatilisation, Flooded rice
Divisions
ocean
Funders
None
Publication Title
ENVIRONMENTAL MODELLING & SOFTWARE
Volume
133
Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
Publisher Location
THE BOULEVARD, LANGFORD LANE, KIDLINGTON, OXFORD OX5 1GB, OXON, ENGLAND