Abiotic environment

The abiotic component of the Virtual Ecosystem focuses on non-living environmental factors that influence ecosystem dynamics. These factors encompass microclimate and hydrology processes, which are critical for understanding and predicting ecological responses of organisms to various environmental conditions, interactions between organisms that shape communities, and the geographical distribution of species.

The microclimate and hydrology components rely on first principles by incorporating fundamental physical laws to simulate local radiation, energy, and carbon balance as well as local and catchment scale water cycle dynamics to predict how microclimatic conditions and hydrological processes interact and evolve over time.

Fig. 2 The key processes in a terrestrial abiotic environment at the example of a tropical rainforest. The system simultaneously balances carbon cycle (green), radiation (orange), energy (red), water (blue), and momentum through turbulent transfer (black). Copyright: Vivienne Groner.