Environmental Modelling & Software

Agent-based models (ABMs) are an increasingly popular choice for simulating large systems of interacting components, and have been applied across a wide variety of natural and environmental systems. However, ABMs can be incredibly ...

• We review advances in ABM methodology, focusing on standardization.
• A recurrent ...

The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) ranges from −10 to 10 and is used for monitoring drought extent and severity. PDSI is a monthly global gridded data set with partial global coverage from 1850 through 1947 and full global ...

• PDSI data are infrequently updated.
• We develop a machine learning method ...

Complex systems simulations can support collaborative water planning by allowing stakeholders to jointly see hidden effects of land- and water-use decisions on groundwater flow. We adopted a participatory modeling progression where ...

• We study how a developmental participatory modeling approach using increasingly realistic models can support water planning.

Integrated, distributed hydrologic models leverage advances in computational power and data accessibility to improve predictive understanding of the water cycle. While impressive advances in this area of environmental modeling have ...

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• An open-source workflow tool automates the setup of watershed hydrologic models anywhere in the US.

Coastal and riverine flooding is one of the most common environmental hazards that affect billions of people worldwide. A coupled hydrologic and coastal storm surge simulation is required to develop an improved understanding of the ...

• PyVF is a program for identifying vertical features automatically from high-resolution topographic elevation data.

Earth Observation (EO) technologies have played an increasingly important role in monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). These technologies often combined with Machine Learning (ML) models provide efficient means for ...

• A new web-based tool for soil moisture estimation at the scale of arid regions.

This paper introduces post-MORDM, a decision-support framework that augments Many Objective Robust Decision Making (MORDM). MORDM often creates an intractable number of environmental management policies, characterized by decision ...

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• Paradigm shift: MORDM decision variables, objectives, robustness as map layers.

Climate matching allows comparisons of climatic conditions between different locations to understand location and species range climatic suitability. The approach may be used as part of horizon scanning exercises such as those ...

• climatchR allows for scripted and high-throughput climate matching with the R language.

Climate is an essential component of environmental models. Over the last two decades, many weather generators have been presented in the literature. Although their implementation into software has been of great help to environmental ...

Forest landscapes pattern and development are affected by environment and disturbance. Disentangling their effects is important to understanding current landscape and predicting future changes. Such studies are limited by short-term ...

• We present a novel framework for reconstructing post-volcanic forest landscapes.

Recently, the conceptual data-driven approach (CDDA) was proposed to correct residuals of ensemble hydrological models (HMs) using data-driven models (DDMs), followed by the stochastic CDDA (SCDDA) that used HM simulations as input to ...

• A new version of the stochastic conceptual-data-driven approach (SCDDA) is proposed.

Calibration and validation are standardized practices to establish the credibility of biogeochemical models for understanding agroecosystem nutrient dynamics. We evaluated three automatic calibration approaches, including simultaneous, ...

PRISM, a new forest management decision support system, was developed for United States national forest planning at the same time existing tools were deprecated. PRISM has a friendly graphical user interface to facilitate model ...

• PRISM is an open-source user-friendly decision support system for forest planning.

The recording and simulation data of forest landscapes are massive, high-dimensional, and abstract, requiring intuitive representation. 3-D visualization is an efficient tool to comprehend possible landscape changes generated by real-...

• Development and application of a 3-D forest landscape visualization platform.
• ...

This paper introduces HydroLang, an open-source and integrated community-driven computational web framework for hydrology and water resources research and education. HydroLang employs client-side web technologies and standards to carry ...

• Open source web-based programming framework for hydrological research and education.

Complex environmental model outputs used to inform decisions often have systematic errors and are of inappropriate resolution, requiring downscaling and bias correction for local applications. Here we provide a new interpretation of ...

• We introduce dasymetric modelling (DM) as a spatial bias correction method.
• ...

Sand ripples are geomorphic features on the seafloor that affect bottom boundary layer dynamics including wave attenuation and sediment transport. We present a new equilibrium ripple predictor using a machine learning approach that ...

• Developed and validated a probabilistic equilibrium ripple predictor.
• Utilized ...

A multivariate polynomial regression modeling (MPR) framework is developed to estimate total dissolved solids (TDS) in stormwater runoffs from rangelands in the Colorado River Basin in the Southwestern United States. An accurate TDS ...

• A parameter estimation model for TDS is developed based on experimental data collected in the upper Colorado River basin.

This study evaluates an emerging capability to monitor high spatial (pixel size = 3.7 m) and temporal (daily to sub-daily imagery) resolution coastal change using PlanetScope cubesats. A new toolkit (CoastSat.PlanetScope) is presented ...

• A new toolkit introduced to map shoreline change from PlanetScope cubesat images.

In this study, we evaluated the use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and multispectral data to detect aquaculture waterbodies in Southern Bangladesh to quantify fish production on a national scale. For this purpose, we developed an ...

• Information about rapidly growing aquaculture in developing countries is limited.

Complex physical models are the most advanced tools available for producing realistic simulations of the climate system. However, such levels of realism imply high computational cost and restrictions on their use for policymaking and ...

• •A new tool for generating probabilistic regional climate change scenarios and risk measures

• •AIRCC-Clim is a standalone, ...

This paper describes a simplified flood model based on cellular automata in order to be implemented in applications, which require the simulation of a great number of flood scenarios at regional scale. The model is based on a top-down ...

• The model is faster than hydrodynamic models allowing the execution of a large number of scenarios for risk assessment.

We develop a regional hydrological model that applies to arid and semi-arid regions, by explicitly considering the effect of irrigation on the hydrological processes. A new irrigation module is here integrated into the recently ...

• We introduce a new irrigation model for regional hydrological simulations.
• Our ...

Understanding the internal structure of permeable and impermeable sediments (e.g. point-bars and tidal-flat deposits) generated by the evolution of meandering tidal channels is essential for accurate modeling of groundwater flow and ...

• Depositional history in meandering channel deposits fundamentally affects solute fate.

Numerical prediction of coastal inundation can be complex due to the multiple physical processes involved and typically requires two-dimensional numerical model extents, particularly in areas with complex along-shore morphology. Such ...

• A subset of XBeach, translated to be executed on GPUs are presented (XBGPU).
• ...

In this contribution, two heuristic search algorithms, (1) particle swarm optimization (PSO) and (2) genetic algorithm (GA) are used to calibrate the iRIC, a two-dimensional hydraulic model for a test case on the Green River in Utah. ...

• Heuristic search algorithms provide an objective method for hydraulic model calibration.

In light of the rapidly increasing regulation of rivers due to planned and constructed reservoirs, monitoring reservoir operations has become very crucial. The Reservoir Assessment Tool (RAT) framework was developed to monitor ...

The Soil & Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a useful model for evaluating socio-ecological tradeoffs and analyzing coupled natural-human system dynamics in agricultural watersheds. However, reservoir operating options in SWAT are ...

• We integrate coordinated, closed-loop reservoir operations into the Soil & Water Assessment Tool.

Widely-used term-weighting schemes and machine learning (ML) classifiers with default parameter settings were assessed for their performance when applied to environmental big data analysis. Five term-weighting schemes [term frequency (...

• Term-weighting schemes and ML classifiers were tested for big data analysis.
• ...