New open-source tool models how forest soils respond to climate and management change

A new open-source tool developed within the HoliSoils project enables forest managers, researchers, and greenhouse gas inventory teams to simulate how forest soil carbon stocks and greenhouse gas emissions respond to different climate, land-use, and management scenarios.

Forest soils store more carbon than vegetation and the atmosphere combined, but this carbon is vulnerable to losses from climate change, disturbances, and intensive management. Understanding how soils respond is central to climate-smart forest management, yet the models involved have traditionally required specialist expertise. The tool, me4soc (Multi-model Ensemble Interface for Soil Organic Carbon Predictions), was developed to make this type of modelling accessible to non-specialists.

me4soc integrates six established models: Century, RothC, ICBM, Yasso07, Yasso20, and an empirical greenhouse gas flux model. Running them as an ensemble allows users to compare outputs and assess the uncertainty associated with model structure, rather than relying on a single prediction.

The platform can use either user-supplied data or information automatically retrieved from open-access databases for European sites. It allows users to assess the potential impacts of management practices, including thinning, clear-cutting, and residue retention, under climate scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). According to its developers, me4soc is designed for scenario analysis rather than calibrated forecasting.

me4soc is one of several practical outputs from HoliSoils, a Horizon 2020 project that ran from 2021 to 2025 and brought together 20 partners from across Europe, including the European Forest Institute.

Learn more and access the me4soc tool.

Related publication

Bruni, E., Lehtonen, A., Hashimoto, S., Ťupek, B., Bacha, N., Bunker, D., Brasselet-Darracq, I., Fages-Gouyou, D., Hemeray, Y., Reyer, C. P. O., Sierra, C. A., & Guenet, B. (2026). me4soc: A multi-model ensemble interface for soil organic carbon predictions. Ecological Modelling, 521, 111716.