LUQ LTER Simulation Models

Simulation models provide information about the effects of hurricanes of different intensities and paths. This approach includes the collection and management of core long-term datasets.

Modeling climate and photosynthesis for the entire Luquillo - The ecological models developed by the Systems Ecology Lab at SUNY-ESF for the Luquillo Experimental Forest (LEF) of the Luquillo Mountains in northeastern Puerto Rico provide a visualization of ESF group's efforts to model the entire mountain over time and to undertake explicit validation of the model output as a function of elevation. - (from http://www.esf.edu/luq/)

TOPOCLIM - The TOPOCLIM model (TOPOgraphically driven CLIMate model) generates simulated values of climatic variables in mountainous terrain.
Soil Organic Carbon - a spatially-explicit version of the CENTURY soil model to characterize the storage and flux of soil organic carbon (SOC, 0-30 cm depth) in the Luquillo Experimental Forest (LEF), Puerto Rico as a function of climate, vegetation, and soils.
GPP Model - simulated forest gross primary productivity
NPP Model - shows the annual change of NPP over the whole LEF

Harvard Forest - "To improve our understanding of these factors and of the role of catastrophic hurricane wind as a disturbance process, we take an integrative approach. A simple meteorological model (HURRECON) utilizes meteorological data to reconstruct wind conditions at specific sites and regional gradients in wind speed and direction during a hurricane. A simple topograhic exposure model (EXPOS) utilizes wind direction predicted by HURRECON and a digital elevation map to estimate landscape-level exposure to the strongest winds." - (text from http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/data/p01/HF010/HF010.html)

Hurrecon- HURRECON is a simple meteorological model that estimates hurricane surface wind speed and direction based on the track, size, and intensity of a hurricane and the surface type (land or water).
EXPOS - EXPOS is a simple model of topographic exposure to wind that utilizes digital elevation data to predict which points on a landscape are exposed to or protected from a given wind direction

University of North Texas, Environmental Modeling Laboratory - "Also, an important objective of the LEF LTER program is to understand the dynamics of forest community response to environmental gradients and disturbances over the entire mountain landscape." (text from http://emod.unt.edu/lef1/abstract.htm):

Landscape Model - We describe a combined gap and patch- transition modeling approach to contribute to the understanding of the dynamics of forest community response to environmental gradients and disturbances.