Multimodel ensembles of wheat growth: many models are better than one
2015
Martre, Pierre | Wallach, Daniel | Asseng, Senthold | Ewert, Frank | Jones, James W. | Rotter, Reimund P. | Boote, Kenneth J. | Ruane, Alex C. | Thorburn, Peter J. | Cammarano, Davide | Hatfield, Jerry L. | Rosenzweig, Cynthia | Aggarwal, Pramod K. | Angulo, Carlos | Basso, Bruno | Bertuzzi, Patrick | Biernath, Christian | Brisson, Nadine | Challinor, Andrew J. | Doltra, Jordi | Gayler, Sebastian | Goldberg, Richie | Grant, Robert F. | Heng, Lee | Hooker, Josh | Hunt, Leslie A. | Ingwersen, Joachim | Izaurralde, Roberto C. | Kersebaum, Kurt Christian | Mueller, Christoph | Kumar, Soora Naresh | Nendel, Claas | O'Leary, Garry | Olesen, Jorgen E. | Osborne, Tom M. | Palosuo, Taru | Priesack, Eckart | Ripoche, Dominique | Semenov, Mikhail A. | Shcherbak, Iurii | Steduto, Pasquale | Stoeckle, Claudio O. | Stratonovitch, Pierre | Streck, Thilo | Supit, Iwan | Tao, Fulu | Travasso, Maria | Waha, Katharina | White, Jeffrey W. | Wolf, Joost | Génétique Diversité et Ecophysiologie des Céréales (GDEC) ; Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-Université Blaise Pascal - Clermont-Ferrand 2 (UBP) | Agrosystèmes Cultivés et Herbagers (ARCHE) ; Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-École nationale supérieure agronomique de Toulouse (ENSAT) ; Institut National Polytechnique (Toulouse) (Toulouse INP) ; Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université de Toulouse (UT)-Institut National Polytechnique (Toulouse) (Toulouse INP) ; Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université de Toulouse (UT) | Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering [Gainesville] (UF|ABE) ; Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences [Gainesville] (UF|IFAS) ; University of Florida [Gainesville] (UF)-University of Florida [Gainesville] (UF) | Institute of Crop Science and Resource Conservation [Bonn] ; Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn | Plant Production Research ; Agrifood Research Finland | NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) ; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) | Ecosystem Sciences ; Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation [Australia] (CSIRO) | National Laboratory for Agriculture and Environment | Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, Research Program on ClimateChange, Agriculture and Food Security ; International Water Management Institute | Department of Geological Sciences ; Michigan State University [East Lansing] ; Michigan State University System-Michigan State University System | W. K. Kellogg Biological Station (KBS) ; Michigan State University [East Lansing] ; Michigan State University System-Michigan State University System | Agroclim (AGROCLIM) ; Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) | Institute of Soil Ecology, German Research Center for Environmental Health ; Helmholtz Zentrum München = German Research Center for Environmental Health (HMGU) | Agronomie ; Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-AgroParisTech | CGIAR-ESSP Program on Climate Change,Agriculture and Food Security ; International Center for Tropical Agriculture | School of Earth and Environment [Leeds] (SEE) ; University of Leeds | Cantabrian Agricultural Research and Training Centre | Water & Earth System Science Competence Cluster ; Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen = University of Tübingen | Department of Renewable Resources ; University of Alberta | International Atomic Energy Agency [Vienna] (IAEA) | School of Agriculture, Policy and Development ; University of Reading (UOR) | Department of Plant Agriculture ; University of Guelph [Guelf, Ontario, Canada] | Institute of Soil Science and Land Evaluation ; Universität Stuttgart | Department of Geographical Sciences ; University of Maryland [College Park] (UMD) ; University System of Maryland-University System of Maryland | Institute of Landscape Systems Analysis ; Leibniz-Zentrum für Agrarlandschaftsforschung = Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) | Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) | Centre for Environment Science and Climate Resilient Agriculture (CESCRA) ; Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) | Department of Primary Industries, Landscape & Water Sciences ; Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7 (UPD7) | Department of Agroecology ; Aarhus University [Aarhus] | National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Department of Meteorology ; University of Reading (UOR) | Institute of Soil Ecology German Research Center for Environmental Health ; Helmholtz Zentrum München = German Research Center for Environmental Health (HMGU) | Computational and Systems Biology Department ; Rothamsted Research ; Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)-Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [France] (FAO) ; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [Rome, Italie] (FAO) | Washington State University (WSU) | Institute of Soil Science and Land Evaluation ; Universität Hohenheim = University of Hohenheim | Wageningen University and Research [Wageningen] (WUR) | Institute Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research ; Chinese Academy of Sciences [Beijing] (CAS) | CIRN, Institute forClimate and Water ; Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA) | Arid-Land Agricultural Research Center ; United States Department of Agriculture
Crop models of crop growth are increasingly used to quantify the impact of global changes due to climate or crop management. Therefore, accuracy of simulation results is a major concern. Studies with ensembles of crop models can give valuable information about model accuracy and uncertainty, but such studies are difficult to organize and have only recently begun. We report on the largest ensemble study to date, of 27 wheat models tested in four contrasting locations for their accuracy in simulating multiple crop growth and yield variables. The relative error averaged over models was 24-38% for the different end-of-season variables including grain yield (GY) and grain protein concentration (GPC). There was little relation between error of a model for GY or GPC and error for in-season variables. Thus, most models did not arrive at accurate simulations of GY and GPC by accurately simulating preceding growth dynamics. Ensemble simulations, taking either the mean (e-mean) or median (e-median) of simulated values, gave better estimates than any individual model when all variables were considered. Compared to individual models, e-median ranked first in simulating measured GY and third in GPC. The error of e-mean and e-median declined with an increasing number of ensemble members, with little decrease beyond 10 models. We conclude that multimodel ensembles can be used to create new estimators with improved accuracy and consistency in simulating growth dynamics. We argue that these results are applicable to other crop species, and hypothesize that they apply more generally to ecological system models.
Show more [+] Less [-]AGROVOC Keywords
Bibliographic information
This bibliographic record has been provided by AgroParisTech