seanth/maestra---1997

MAESTRO/MAESTRA is a model of forest canopy radiation absorption and photosynthesis. The model has a long history, going back to the work of Norman & Jarvis in the 1970's and 80's. Ying Ping Wang improved and tested the model for his PhD thesis, and it was published in Wang & Jarvis (1990) Agric For Meteorol 51:257-280. A lot of other people have worked on the model over the years, and as of 1997 there were several versions of the model in existence, most of which were complicated and difficult to understand or modify. For the purposes of the ECOCRAFT project, I (Belinda Medlyn) have revised a version of the MAESTRO model which I obtained in early 1997 from Ying-Ping Wang. The revised model was renamed to MAESTRA. The major revisions included: (i) removing redundant and ‘spaghetti’ code; (ii) modularising the code to make the program easier to understand and modify; (iii) incorporating standard formulations of physiological sub-modules (Farquhar - von Caemmerer, Ball-Berry).