The TERROIR computer model — **TERRoir level Organic matter Interactions and Recycling model** — was built to assess **soil fertility management** and the **nutrient recycling efficiency** of agro-sylvo-pastoral landscapes. It is a spatially-explicit ABM that represents the management of a typical West African **agro-sylvo-pastoral landscape** in space and over time.
The model focuses on the processes that create **biomass flows **and the related nutrient cycling. Here, it focuses on nitrogen (N) as a key limiting resource for both plant and animal production in West African agro-ecosystems.
The purpose of the model is to provide realistic estimations of the **structure of N flows** at different levels: land plot and herd, household and village. It is not intended to predict long term agro-ecosystem dynamics but rather to **compare** different agro-ecosystems, depending on input parameters concerning the structure of the landscape (proportion of land units, i.e. homogeneous part of the landscape in terms of land use and management practices) and crop-livestock systems diversity (linked to a typology of households).
The model can be further used to explore new improved agro-sylvo-pastoral landscapes.
It is coded with **Gama (v1.7)**, a multi-agent simulation and spatially explicit modeling platform.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.comses.net/codebases/5608/releases/1.3.0/