Hi Jean-Philippe,

1.  I don't think that there is a strict naming convention for the DSSAT
soil files. It fortunately is pretty flexible. If you look through the
SOIL.LST or SOIL.SOL file, which can be opened with an ASCII editor, you
will see that most soil profiles have four alphabetical characters and then
six numericals. Total name size has to be 10 alphabetical + numerical
characters. But you will also see a few soil profiles named IB00000001,
IB00000012, etc. For the numericals, often a two-digit year is used (e.g. 95
for 1995), with the remaining four numericals, for instance, as the plot or
experiment number.

The rest of the soil profile layout has to be identical as the rest
concerning the positioning of the data and the number of positions they
occupy; the model is pretty sensitive to these details. See the DSSAT v.3
manual (volume 2, page 45+46) for the data formats. Each column in the
layer-by-layer part of the profile occupies six positions (including
blanks).

This would make a soil profile, to be put within the SOIL.SOL file. You can,
however, also make a separate soil file of it, as long as it has the *.SOL
extention and the first two letters identical as the soil profile name. For
instance, I have my EBMZ850001 and EBMZ870001 together in a EB.SOL file.
DSSAT has a bunch of profiles named UCEA880001, UCJG920001 and UCWK910001
together in an UC.SOL file. For some unknown reason, though, this latter
sometimes does not work (one of those sudden computer miracles...), in which
case you will have to put the profiles in the SOIL.SOL file.


2.  According to the DSSAT v.3 manual (volume 2, page 46), the CEC is in
cmol/kg. But in reality, it is an option that has not been activated, as you
won't find it back in the DSSAT code.

GOOD LUCK!

Arjan Gijsman
Univ. Florida / Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT)


-----Original Message-----
From: Jean-Philippe Brassard [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2002 3:02 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: soil files


Dear members,

I have the following questions concerning the soil files:

1- How can I choose (customize) the name of a soil file I create?

2- When manually entering data for a soil, is the CEC simply the CEC (in
cmol/kg), or is it the CEC(charge), wich takes into acount the charge of the
different elements used to calculate it?

thank you for your help
sincerely,

Jean-Philippe Brassard
Étudiant Gradué
Département de Géographie
Université de Montréal

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