Using the WOFOST plant growth model to built the data base of the terrestrial tritium and food chain modules in RODOS

The European Commission Project RODOS implements a coherent methodology for a Real-time On-line Decision Support System for Nuclear Emergency across Europe. Within this system there is a special module to model the transfer of tritiated water from releases to terrestrial foods. In order to model the transfer of tritiated water from air to various plants, the conversion to organically bound tritium, and the migration to edible parts of the plant, both the mean dynamics of leaf area index and a physiological description of canopy photosynthesis are required. The WOFOST crop growth model has been selected as a basis for deriving tritium transfer dynamics to plants. Its ability to reproduce site-specific biomass growth of various plants (not only from Europe) is demonstrated in this paper, as well as its compatibility to other photosynthesis models. We have tested that this model can simulate limited fertilization situations via the adaptation of two important parameters. After adaptation of model parameters to site-specific plant growth data, multi-annual mean dynamics can be obtained using meteorological data for subsequent years. (authors)