Accounting for discontinuities from root initiation during balance calculation
As discussed during OSR developer summit: One likely common source of C balance errors is that new root branches can be initiated at any time, including between estimation of demand for C (and other resources) and when they are actually distributed, leading to discontinuous jumps in resource demand.
Some possible solutions we discussed:
- Start lateral roots as primordia with zero carbon costs (perhaps have some of the costs modelled as carbon costs of the parent root) that stay dormant for 1-2 days and then slowly increase their growth rate.
- Implement a rebalancing phase after each carbon allocation event.
- Implement a numerical method that can deal with the jumps in carbon cost.
- Synchronise events with timesteps.