Overview

COMPASS contains a collection of models and tools that are used in participatory processes aimed at co-design of farms and landscapes in agroecosystems. These ecosystems have an agricultural function and provide food, feed, fibers or fuel.

Agroecosystems are activily managed by farmers and other landscape managers. They are characterized by heterogeneity in biophysical and socio-economic conditions, processes at different hierarchical levels and trade-offs among various functions.

The COMPASS framework integrates various tools that quantify processes and indicators at field, farm and landscape scales, or help to clarify the perspectives and interests of actors. The framework consists of a set of widely applied simulation, optimization and visualization tools that differ in their representation of social-ecological systems and in the spatial and temporal dimensions addressed.

Figure 1. Overview of the COMPASS tools along axes of hierachical levels and assessment domains.

The tools are applicable across a large range of hierachical levels and scales, and quantify indictors for different domains (Figure 1). ROTAT+ and FarmSTEPS can assist in cropping system planning at field and farm levels. These models use agronomic rules to generate agronomically feasible crop sequences (both) and spatial crop allocation plans (only FarmSTEPS). This can be complemented with the NDICEA model, which is not part of COMPASS. This model offers the opportunity to simulate the dynamics of water and nitrogen in different soil layers, and balances of organic matter and nutrients.

FarmDESIGN is a whole-farm and household model that quantifies a large array of indicators and allows redesign of farms on the basis of multi-objective optimization or scenario studies. It is linked to the FarmM3 model that can be used to quantify flows of dry- and organic matter and nutrients in manure management chains of different complexity. Thereby, nutrient losses and greenhouse gas emissions can be estimated on the basis of emission factors. FarmDANCES performs simulation of long-term (up to 200 years) dynamics of carbon and organic and inorganic nitrogen in grassland-based dairy farms.

FarmDISPLAY quantifies the dispersal of organisms in and among fields, but can also be applied for larger extents. Landscape IMAGES is a spatially explicit modelling tool that uses multi-objective optimization allocate crops and other land-use to landscape elements and evaluates the performance at different levels for the farms and regions within the landscape and for the whole landscape. It is embedded in the Landscape LAB tool that allows simple adjustments of (vector-based) GIS maps and application of landscape ecology algorithms.

FarmMATCH is a set of algorithms for targeting innovations and technologies to the biophysical and socio-economic conditions within and in the context of households. It operates on GIS maps. The tools QSample and FuzzyDANCES are used for semi-quantitative assessments. QSample helps users to understand the consequences of choices regarding the design of a Q methodology exercise that aims to create an inventory of stakeholder perspectives around a contentious topic, i.e. a discourse. FuzzyDANCES is a tool for fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM), and support drawing and analysis of FCMs. These maps can be developed for any system at any level of integration.

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