Abstract: Ruminant production systems are important producers of food, support rural communities and culture, and help to maintain a range of ecosystem services including the sequestering of carbon in grassland soils. However, these systems also contribute significantly to climate change through greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, while intensi- fication of production has driven biodiversity and nutrient loss, and soil degradation. Modeling can offer insights into the complexity underlying the relationships between climate change, management and policy choices, food production, and the maintenance of ecosystem services. This paper 1) provides an overview of how ruminant systems modeling supports the efforts of stakeholders and policymakers to predict, mitigate and adapt to climate change and 2) provides ideas for enhancing modeling to fulfil this role. Many grassland models can predict plant growth, yield and GHG emissions from mono-specific swards, but modeling multi-species swards, grassland quality and the impact of management changes requires further development. Current livestock models provide a good basis for predicting animal production; linking these with models of animal health and disease is a prior- ity. Farm-scale modeling provides tools for policymakers to predict the emissions of GHG and other pollutants from livestock farms, and to support the management decisions of farmers from environmental and economic standpoints. Other models focus on how policy and associated management changes affect a range of economic and environmental variables at regional, national and European scales. Models at larger scales generally utilise more empirical approaches than those applied at animal, field and farm-scales and include assumptions which may not be valid under climate change conditions. It is therefore important to continue to develop more realistic representations of processes in regional and global models, using the understanding gained from finer-scale modeling. An iterative process of model development, in which lessons learnt from mechanistic models are ap- plied to develop ‘smart’ empirical modeling, may overcome the trade-off between complexity and usability. De- veloping the modeling capacity to tackle the complex challenges related to climate change, is reliant on closer links between modelers and experimental researchers, and also requires knowledge-sharing and increasing technical compatibility across modeling disciplines. Stakeholder engagement throughout the process of model development and application is vital for the creation of relevant models, and important in reducing problems re- lated to the interpretation of modeling outcomes. Enabling modeling to meet the demands of policymakers and other stakeholders under climate change will require collaboration within adequately-resourced, long-term inter-disciplinary research networks

Abstract: Confidential content, in preparation for a peer-reviewed publication.

Abstract: The study ROTATIONEFFECT aims to compare the output of different models simulating field data sets with multi-year crop rotations including different treatments.Within the first Step (1a2a) data sets (comprising a total of 301 crop growth seasons) for 5 locations in Europe were distributed to 15 interested modeller groups.For this step only minimal information for calibration were provided to the modellers. In total 15 modelling teams sent their “uncalibrated” results as single-year calculations and/or continuous calculations of rotation depending on the capability of the model. Results have been evaluated and the paper submitted (European Journal of Agronomy).Now, within the 2nd step (1b2b) modellers were provided with more information on the crop for the calibration of models. Again, results of calibrated runs were collected.6 models were capable to run the rotations as continuous runs and another set of 6 models provided single year simulations.A first overview of the improvement of predictions due to calibration has been produced. Result files have been uploaded to the web platform for CropM results at Aarhus University (Work package C2 – data management). No Label