CSDMS: A community platform for numerical modeling of Earth-surface processes

Abstract

Abstract. Computational modelling occupies a unique niche in Earth and environmental sciences. Models serve not just as scientific technology and infrastructure, but also as digital containers of the scientific community's understanding of the natural world. As this understanding improves, so too must the associated software. This dual nature–models as both infrastructure and hypotheses–means that modelling software must be designed to evolve continually as geoscientific knowledge itself evolves. Here we describe design principles, protocols, and tools developed by the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System (CSDMS) to promote a flexible, interoperable, and ever-improving research software ecosystem. These include a community repository for model sharing and metadata, interface and ontology standards for model interoperability, language bridging tools, a modular programming library for model construction, modular software components for data access, and a Python-based execution and model-coupling framework. Methods of community support and engagement that help create a community-centered software ecosystem are also discussed.

The Art of Landslides: How Stochastic Mass Wasting Shapes Topography and Influences Landscape Dynamics

“…The model is summarized below; we refer the reader to Campforts, Shobe, et al (2020) and Shobe et al (2017) for the theoretical framework and details on the derivation. The HyLands model is integrated in the open-source Landlab modeling framework (Barnhart et al, 2020b;Hobley et al, 2017), which is part of the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System (CSDMS) Workench (Tucker et al, 2021).…”

“…The HyLands model builds on three new components: water and sediment is routed using the PriorityFloodFlowRouter, fluvial erosion and sediment transport is calculated using the SpaceLargeScaleEroder while bedrock landsliding and sediment runout is calculated using the BedrockLandslider. These and all other Landlab components used in this paper are part of the open source Landlab modeling framework, version 2.5.0 (Barnhart et al, 2020a;Hobley et al, 2017), which is part of the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System (Tucker et al, 2021)…”