Fine roots in models: The answer to life, the universe, and everything

Climate models use millions of lines of code to simulate the intricacies of the natural world and forecast a range of possible futures for the Earth System. Models have many answers—for example—the modeled carbon to nitrogen ratios of fine plant roots spanning the globe all equal 42. But what exactly was the question? How about: How can models simply and accurately represent the role that fine roots play in ecosystem processes spanning the globe? Don’t panic—we can answer this question with a multidisciplinary team of modelers, software engineers, data specialists, and scientists getting their hands dirty.