Facility Support: Organizational Infrastructure for the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System

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Organizational Infrastructure for the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling SystemNSF Abstract for EAR-0621695The Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System (CSDMS) is a national effort to develop, support, and disseminate to the earth-science research and teaching community, integrated software aimed at predicting the erosion, transport, and deposition of sediment and solutes in landscapes and their repository sedimentary basins. The goal of CSDMS is to enable the rapid development and application of linked dynamical models tailored to specific landscape-basin evolution problems and at specific temporal and spatial scales. The CSDMS enterprise will allow individual scientists, educators and students to participate through a virtual or digital library of continuously evolving and linkable models, boundary condition data, and educational packages. Three proof-of-concept challenges will be addressed: 1) Predicting the transport and fate of fine sediment and carbon from source areas in the landscape to sedimentary basins that accumulate sediment over time; 2) Understanding the impact of humans on the natural cycle, through, for example, changes in waterways, forest fires, and agricultural practices; and 3) Tracking the evolution of landscapes and seascapes through our geological past, with focus on Pleistocene glacial cycles. The CSDMS will develop and maintain the computational system, and ensure the portability and interoperability of earth-surface modules, the computational efficiency of system code, and the clarity and consistency of documentation and interfaces.A community-based modeling environment, built of tools created by and provided for a broad spectrum of users with diverse aims, skills, and interests provides for the flexibility required by those who will benefit from CSDMS products. Modeling the surface of the Earth is a problem of comparable complexity to modeling oceanic and atmospheric dynamics. The experience of these communities teaches us that development of large, complex numerical models rapidly becomes a task for an entire research community. A community approach allows efficient development of models that are more powerful than any single group could develop. The CSDMS infrastructure provides a modeling environment to catalyze Earth-surface research over the coming decades by: empowering a broad community of scientists and students with computing tools and interdisciplinary knowledge; streamlining the process of idea generation and hypothesis testing through linked surface dynamics models; and enabling rapid creation and application of models tailored to specific settings, scientific problems, and time scales. CSDMS will provide 1) professional training in use of the CSDMS computational system, 2) technology to enhance undergraduate earth-science education, (3) tools for enhancing secondary-school teaching in earth-surface science, and (4) informal educational packages to public institutions such as science museums. This award is made jointly between EAR and OCE of the GEO Directorate, NSF.