🌱

Agronomy & Soil Physics

Simulate water percolating through soil horizons, plant roots competing for nutrients, and erosion reshaping landscapes — the physical science of growing food.

6 simulations PDE · Cellular Automata Fluid Flow · L-Systems

Simulations

Open any simulation — runs instantly in your browser

🌱
New★★☆ Moderate
Plant Growth Simulator
GDD (Growing Degree Day) model for crop development. Adjust base temperature, soil moisture and photoperiod to simulate phenological stages of wheat, maize, soybean and sunflower.
GDDPhenologyCrop Model
🏔️
Popular★★☆ Moderate
Tectonic Plates & Terrain
Procedural terrain generation with erosion passes — hydraulic and thermal erosion carve river channels and valleys exactly as seen in agricultural landscapes.
Height MapErosionThree.js
🌍
★★★ Advanced
Tectonic Plate Simulation
Voronoi-based plate tectonics with collision folding and subduction. Understand the soil parent material and geomorphology that shapes agricultural potential.
VoronoiGeologyWebGL
🌧️
★☆☆ BeginnerNew
Rain & Surface Runoff
SPH water droplets fall on a digital terrain. Toggle precipitation rate, soil permeability and slope to visualise infiltration vs surface runoff and erosion.
SPHInfiltrationParticles
🌿
★★☆ Moderate
L-Systems — Plant Growth
Lindenmayer systems produce fractal plant architectures. Adjust production rules and branching angles to grow wheat, maize, sunflower and tree canopies.
L-SystemsFractalCanvas
🟡
★★☆ Moderate
Reaction-Diffusion — Turing Patterns
Gray–Scott model reproduces the same self-organising nutrient diffusion patterns seen in root hair development and leaf venation networks.
Gray-ScottDiffusionGLSL
🧩
★☆☆ Beginner
Conway's Game of Life — Soil Automata
Cellular automaton on a grid — a simple model for spatial competition between plant species, soil microbiome spread and weed invasion dynamics.
CAGLSLEmergence
🌿
New★★☆ Moderate
Soil Erosion Simulator
RUSLE-based hillslope erosion model. Adjust rainfall erosivity, soil erodibility, slope, land cover and conservation practice factors. Visualise topsoil loss, sediment deposition and risk class.
RUSLEErosionAgronomy

Related Articles

Related Categories

About Agronomy & Agriculture Simulations

Soil water flow, nutrient uptake, root competition, and crop models

Agronomy and agriculture simulations model the physical and biological processes that determine how crops grow. Soil-water flow simulations solve Richards' equation for unsaturated porous media, showing how precipitation percolates through layered soil horizons and reaches plant roots. Nutrient competition models track nitrogen and phosphorus uptake by competing root systems using Michaelis–Menten kinetics.

Crop-growth simulations integrate daily temperature, solar radiation, and soil moisture into development stages from emergence to harvest. Erosion models apply the RUSLE equation to show how rainfall intensity, slope angle, and cover-crop management change topsoil loss. These are the same computational frameworks used in precision-agriculture software, irrigation scheduling, and climate-impact studies on food security.

Each simulation in this category is built with accuracy and interactivity in mind. The underlying mathematical models are the same ones used in academic research and professional engineering — just made accessible through a web browser. Changing parameters in real time and observing the results is one of the most effective ways to build intuition for complex scientific and engineering concepts.

Key Concepts

Topics and algorithms you'll explore in this category

Soil Water MovementRichards equation and unsaturated porous flow
Plant Growth ModelLogistic growth, photosynthesis rate, and LAI
PhotosynthesisLight-response curves and carbon assimilation
Soil ErosionUSLE factors: rainfall, slope, cover, and practice
Root GrowthBranching geometry and nutrient-driven tropism
Nutrient CyclingNitrogen and phosphorus cycles in field soils

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about this simulation category

What does the agronomy category simulate?
The agronomy category models soil water dynamics (Richards equation), plant growth via logistic models, photosynthesis light curves, soil erosion (USLE), and root architecture development.
Are these useful for agricultural education?
Absolutely — they visualise processes that are difficult to observe directly in the field, from root branching to water infiltration fronts and nutrient uptake.
What equations power the plant growth simulations?
Plant growth uses a modified logistic equation coupled with a Monteith radiation interception model. Photosynthesis uses Farquhar/von Caemmerer/Berry biochemical kinetics simplified for real-time display.