ISMC – GEWEX SoilWat Meeting

Jul 14 - 16, 2025 | University of Reading

The International Soil Modelling Consortium (ISMC) Soil and GEWEX Water Initiative (SoilWat) brings together two research communities to improve the representation of soil and subsurface processes in weather and climate models. The subsurface modeling community, broadly represented ISMC, and the climate modeling community, represented by GEWEX, e.g. via its GLASS (Global Land Atmosphere Systems Study) panel, are working together to identify the most pressing challenges related to this effort and ways forward.

Objective

The ISMC – GEWEX SoilWat meeting 2025 serves as a continuation of the first first GEWEX SoilWat Initiative Planning Workshop held in Leipzig, Germany, in June 2016. The 2025 workshop aims to assess achievements and identify research gaps since our last meeting. The main objective is to write a paper that will outline a roadmap, identifying the next frontiers and challenges in this field, and how collaboration can address these. This is especially important since significant developments have taken place within the climate and soil modeling communities in recent years, in particular those relating to Machine Learning, Digital Twins, and high-resolution Earth System modeling.

Program

The topics of this meeting are:

• Modeling of Soil Structure and its relationship with Biophysicochemical Processes, Properties and Parameters
• Unified Soil Hydraulic and Thermal Property modeling approach
• Modeling of the Soil-Plant Hydraulic Continuum, and its relations with the previous topic
• Modeling of Soil Evaporation, Soil Vapour Flow, Root Water Uptake, Soil-Groundwater Interactions
• Modeling of Soil Infiltration
• Modeling of Soil Carbon Cycling and Interactions with Soil Hydrothermal Processes
• Representation of within-gridcell Soil Heterogeneity in LSMs

Discussion will take place in three Break-out sessions

1. Sourcing and deriving internally consistent Soil Parameters for LSM across all biogeochemical cycles
2. Vegetation as a Root Zone Sensor to obtain Dynamic Soil Parameters
3. Land-Atmosphere Interactions and related Metrics informing Soil Model Development

All participants will be asked to provide the organizers with a number of slides, ideally by 16 June, but at the very latest by 30 June 2025, following a template, that outlines:

• their expertise in the context of soil modelling (this includes experimental data to develop, run and test models)
• the most promising recent developments towards improved soil modeling in soil or land models (this could be based on their own papers, those of collaborators or wider afield) and why?
• What are the remaining challenges regarding i. lack of process understanding; ii. calibration/verification; iii parameter requirements; ….
• Potential ways forward?

For the slide deck template click here. We kindly ask that you send your slide deck to Anne Verhoef and Yijian Zeng no later than June 16.

If you have received an invitation but have not yet registered and would still like to participate, please register as soon as possible.

Practical Information

Practical information, including visa requirements, lodging and transportation, can be found at Venue & Travel.

Additional background information:

1st GEWEX SoilWat Initiative Planning Workshop, Leipzig, Germany, June 2016 – Discussions and Outcomes

SoilWat’s vision GEWEX Quarterly Vol 31, no.2, 2021, pg 4–9

Background image courtesy of USDA NRCS Montana
Banner courtesy of (left to right) Ronald Saunders – WALKING TOWARDS CAVERSHAM BRIDGE, Nick Sologoub – Reading. UK, Tristram Brelstaff – Reading University Panorama with Whiteknights House