Garden with Insight v1.0 Help: Plant Growth - Loss of Senescent Plant Material

Leaves falling from trees

(this section is not in the section but is in the epic code.)
The amount of plant material lost to senescence is a portion of standing live biomass based on treePlantingToMaturity_yr. For any tree crop it is the number of years until the tree is mature. For a non- tree crop it is a constant of 2000 (default if 0 is input). So for any non-tree crop, this comes out to 0.000005 (5x10-6) times standingLiveBiomass_tPha in December, and less each month before that (ie very very little). So this function is fairly unimportant for non-tree crops but handles falling of leaves for tree crops. If a tree matures in 20 years, for example, the portion of standingLiveBiomass_tPha is 0.0004 which for a tree of say 1000 kg/ha could be 4 kg/ha lost in this way. This loss goes directly into flat residue in the surface soil layer.

Note: This applies only to trees, and Garden with Insight does not as yet support growing trees.

Loss of senescent material in perennials

This loss is only done in perennials and is based on water stress and age (heat unit index). This loss goes into standing dead residue for the plant. We have changed it so that it also occurs in annuals, since we are allowing them to die slowly.