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Sensitivity analysis consists of an integral and important validatory check of a computer simulation model before the code is used in performing any kind of analysis operation. The present paper demonstrates the use of a relatively new method and tool for conducting global sensitivity analysis (GSA) for environmental models, providing simultaneously the first GSA study of the widely used 1d soil–vegetation–atmospheric transfer (SVAT) model named SimSphere. A software platform called the Gaussian emulation machine for sensitivity analysis (GEM SA), which has been developed for performing a GSA via Bayesian theory, is applied to SimSphere model in order to identify the most responsive model inputs to the simulation of key model outputs, detect their interactions and derive absolute sensitivity measures concerning the model structure. This study is also very timely in that, use of this particular SVAT model is …