Climate extremes pose a threat to terrestrial ecosystem carbon sequestration, imperiling the EU's aim of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. The creation of an open digital twin of the soil-plant system serves to monitor and forecast the repercussions of extreme events on ecosystem functionality. Such a digital twin yields valuable insights that can inform strategies and policies to bolster ecosystem resilience against global climate shifts.
Comprising an integrated workflow, the soil-plant digital twin incorporates a data assimilation framework merging observations with the process-based model STEMMUS-SCOPE. Moreover, this digital twin will be complemented by an interactive and adaptable platform, empowering users to devise and assess what-if scenarios. Notably, this open soil-plant digital twin adheres to Open Science and FAIR principles, ensuring the accessibility and usability of both data and research software. Within this framework, we elucidate how our recently developed STEMMUS-SCOPE model contributes to the open digital twin of the soil-plant system and elaborate on our efforts to enhance the FAIRness of the existing STEMMUS-SCOPE software. We demonstrate the foundational elements of a soil-plant digital twin and underscore the significance of FAIR-enabling digital technologies in rendering research endeavors reproducible and reusable, fostering the exchange of software, data, and knowledge.
