Modular System for Shelves and Coasts (MOSSCO v1.0) – a flexible and multi-component framework for coupled coastal ocean ecosystem modelling

Abstract

Shelf and coastal sea processes extend from the atmosphere through the water column and into the sea bed. These processes are driven by physical, chemical, and biological interactions at local scales, and they are influenced by transport and cross strong spatial gradients. The linkages between domains and many different processes are not adequately described in current model systems. Their limited integration level in part reflects lacking modularity and flexibility; this shortcoming hinders the exchange of data and model components and has historically imposed supremacy of specific physical driver models.We here present the Modular System for Shelves and Coasts (MOSSCO, http://www.mossco.de), a novel domain and process coupling system tailored -but not limited -to the coupling challenges of and applications in the coastal ocean. MOSSCO builds on the existing coupling technology Earth System Modeling Framework and on the Framework for Aquatic Biogeochemical Models, thereby creating a unique level of modularity in both domain and process coupling; the new framework adds rich metadata, flexible scheduling, configurations that allow several tens of models to be coupled, and tested setups for coastal coupled applications. That way, MOSSCO addresses the technology needs of a growing marine coastal Earth System community that encompasses very different disciplines, numerical tools, and research questions.

The large-scale impact of offshore wind farm structures on pelagic primary productivity in the southern North Sea

“…There, top-down mortality of zooplankton is uniform, while we prescribe higher zooplankton mortality near the coast. Furthermore, the ecosystem model MAECS has since evolved and now includes a parameterization for viral loss of phytoplankton (Wirtz 2018, Physics or biology? Persistent chlorophyll accumulations in a shallow coastal sea explained by pathogens and carnivorous grazing, submitted manuscript, hereinafter referred to as Wirtz, submitted).…”

“…For the integrated modelling of benthic and epistructural filtration, water physics and pelagic biogeochemistry, we use the recently introduced modular framework by Lemmen et al (2018), which contains a novel ecosystem model recently applied to and verified for the SNS by Kerimoglu et al (2017). Multi-annual simulations run with and without epistructural mussels allow a first estimate of the sensitivity of pelagic primary productivity to the projected OWFs in this regional sea.…”

Modelling feedbacks between human and natural processes in the land system

“…The CSDMS standards (CSDMS Integration Facility, 2018a), framework (CSDMS Integration Facility, 2018b), and software and model repositories (CSDMS community contribution) are made available on github. The MOSSCO model coupling framework can be retrieved from Lemmen et al (2018b).…”

North Sea Ecosystem-Scale Model-Based Quantification of Net Primary Productivity Changes by the Benthic Filter Feeder Mytilus edulis

“…The description of interactions between pelagic and benthic compartments, and between hydrodynamics, pelagic ecology, benthic biogeochemistry, and benthic filtration requires a spatially and functionally coupled model approach, for which we employ the open source Modular System for Shelves and Coasts (MOSSCO, www.mossco.de) [46]. MOSSCO-coupled applications for the 3D coastal ocean have focussed on processes at the benthic-pelagic interface and, among others, explain spatio-temporal patterns in coastal nutrient concentration [47,48], annual net primary productivity [5], macrobenthic biomass and community dynamics [49], and suspended sediment concentration as affected by macrobenthic activities [50].…”

“…The Model for Adaptive Ecosystems in Coastal Seas (MAECS) [48,56] was used to describe the pelagic ecosystem; it was coupled in the MOSSCO context through the pelagic Framework for Aquatic Biogeochemistry (FABM) [57] and its ESMF component [46]; all pelagic tracers were transported by GETM. MAECS is a four-compartment nutrient-phytoplankton-zooplankton-detritus (NPZD) based model with adaptive stoichiometry following the acclimation and optimal uptake of phytoplankton cell-internal elemental quotas [56].…”