[FEATURE] Include specific soil paramters

[rohansaw]

Feature description

Allow to add actual soil parameters dynamically for a pipeline execution, instead of having them hardcoded in the APSIM template

Problem it solves

To easier support running the vercye pipeline on different regions, the soil parameters for these should be derived dynamically. Currently, the soil parameters are hardcoded in the provided apsimx template for each run.

Suggested solution

Add a step in the pipeline that extract the soil from a soil database (e;g APSoil database) for a given region. Make the update_apsimx_template in the snakefile use this value as an input and adapt the corresponding script to use this to update the template with the correct soil data.

Additional context

Possible considerations

• Is there always a soil value available?
• Does it make sense to composite surrounding soil values, instead of just using the closest value?
• etc.

[wronk]

+1, Yuval will be able to discuss the "possible considerations" with you. I do think you'll always need a value and it's fairly important, so you may want to error out if you cannot obtain one.

Feel free to use jq to insert the new values if that works for you. You can use the method here as a template: https://github.com/JPLMLIA/vercye_ops/blob/main/vercye_ops/snakemake/Snakefile#L36-L37

It should also be possible to load/manipulate the json file via python

[rohansaw]

APSoil only has soil characteristics available for Australia. We therefore need to explore other soil data sources and convert them to the required format for APSIM.

Possible sources with global coverage are listed here under the "Soil Maps and Databases" section.

@Yuval-Sadeh, do you have any experience/recommendations for other soil databases?