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Abstract

Soil organic matter decomposition is a very important
process within the Earth system because it controls the
rates of mineralization of carbon and other biogeochemical
elements, determining their flux to the atmosphere and the
hydrosphere. SOILR is a modeling framework that contains a
library of functions and tools for modeling soil organic matter
decomposition under the R environment for computing.
It implements a variety of model structures and tools to represent
carbon storage and release from soil organic matter.
In SOILR, organic matter decomposition is represented as a
linear system of ordinary differential equations that generalizes
the structure of most compartment-based decomposition
models. A variety of functions is also available to represent
environmental effects on decomposition rates. This document
presents the conceptual basis for the functions implemented in the package. It is complementary to the help pages released with the software.