Medium-Term Analysis of Agroecosystem Sustainability under Different Land Use Practices by Means of Dynamic Crop Simulation

Abstract : The role of dynamic crop models as an intellectual core of computer decision support systems in agricultural management increases significantly in recent time. However, the scope of model applications is often limited by short time scale i.e. crop simulation/forecasting is performed within a particular vegetation season. The use of dynamic models in long-term planning is still much less developed. This contribution presents the author’s efforts in development and improvement of the integrated system of crop simulation «APEX-AGROTOOL» for its use as a tool of model-oriented analysis of land use environmental sustainability. Attention is paid to the modification of the existing software in order to provide an ability to simulate agro-landscape dynamics taking into account crop rotation effects.