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Irish Eyes Are Smiling Over Green Computing

© Adam Hughes

OK, this piece doesn't really have anything to do with the Irish, but given its dateline, I figured it would be appropriate to green things up a little bit. So, this time around, we'll take a look at some of what is going on in the world for computational ecological research. As was mentioned last week, a great source for computational science resources is the San Diego Supercomputer (SDSC) homepage, and as with the other disciplines, there is some good information here on ecological research. Of particular interest for us is the "Modeling" section which links to the San Diego Bay Modeling home page.

The San Diego Bay project is part of SDSC's focus on Earth Systems Science, and it's the breeding ground for many emerging computational ecology techniques. Specifically, this project is intimately involved in the development and testing of tools for ecological modeling, visualization and analysis of modeling data, and user-interfaces for the integration of interdisciplinary methodologies. While the analysis and interface efforts in this project are interesting as well, since we're going for the green here, we'll focus on the ecosystem modeling methods being employed.

The San Diego Bay project employs three computational models to simulate the waters in both the San Diego bay and the nearby ocean up to 5 km from shore. These models encompass techniques from two-dimensional hydronamics, three- dimensional hydrodynamics, and terrestrial watershed runoff methods. Using the hydrodynamic models, scientists can predict basic properties of the waters, along with transport of inorganic and organic species in the water. The runoff model allows for the theoretical study of stormwater transport of sediment and conatminants into the San Diego Bay.

The 2-D model, dubbed TRIM2D, was developed by R. Cheng of the US Geological Survey and V. Casulli of the University of Trento, Italy. This model is used for shallow-water simulation and employs semi-implicit, finite-difference techniques. For the San Diego Bay simulation, TRIM2D uses a 20.0 by 15.6 grid to model the Bay currents. To do this, the researchers make use of the predictability of periodicity in astrological events to synchronize their simulations with the expected tidal activity. Typical simulations last model a period of from 3 to 30 days, and each time step is 4 to 6 minutes. A quick cocktail-napkin calculations shows that this comprises 720-10,800 total time steps, which is enough to lend statistical credence to the results.

Next time around, we'll finish up our look at the San Diego Bay Modeling Project with a survey of the other methods employed. The direct link to the project web page is

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