The MONICA agroecosystem model

Publication date: 06-02-2026
Extent: 42 pages

Contributions by: Claas Nendel, Michael Berg-Mohnicke, Rachel Escueta, Gohar Ghazaryan, Leonardo Inforsato, Bahareh Kamali, Marlene Palka, Ahsan Raza, Ehsan Eyshi Rezaei, Xenia Specka and Jing Yu, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany

Chapter synopsis:

This chapter describes the MONICA agroecosystem model, its development from the original HERMES model, its main features, and example applications for various tasks across scales. MONICA allows a balanced view on crop and soil processes when simulating cropping systems over a wide range of environments and management regimens. Developed and parameterised at the plot scale, recent advances have made MONICA fit to be applied over large scales, using remote sensing to identify spatio-temporal patterns of key inputs. MONICA’s output helps answer a wide range of questions for research and decision making, including future scenarios, trade-off analyses, and strategic development in crop production and related ecosystem services and disservices under climate change.

DOI: 10.19103/AS.2025.0155.19