Book excerpt: Modeling Processes and Their Interactions in Cropping Systems A complete discussion of soil-plant-climate-management processes In Modeling Processes and Their Interactions in Cropping Systems: Challenges for the 21st Century, a team of distinguished researchers delivers a comprehensive and up-to-date scientific textbook devoted to teaching the modeling of soil-plant-climate-management processes at the upper undergraduate and graduate levels. The book emphasizes the new opportunities and paradigms available to modern lab and field researchers and aims to improve their understanding and quantification of individual processes and their interactions. The book helps readers quantify field research results in terms of the fundamental theory and concepts broadly generalizable beyond specific sites, as well as predict experimental results from knowledge of the fundamental factors that determine the environment and plant growth in different climates. Readers will also discover: An introduction to water and chemical transport in the soil matrix and macropores Explorations of heat transport, water balance, snowpack, and soil freezing Discussions of merging machine learning with APSIM models to improve the evaluation of the impact of climate extremes on wheat yields in Australia Examinations of the quantification and modeling of management effects on soil properties, including discussions of tillage, reconsolidation, crop residues, and crop management The book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the 2030 breakthroughs in agriculture identified by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.