Community Facility Support: The Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System (CSDMS)

地球表面的地貌、海岸线和土壤正经历着滑坡、洪水和风暴潮等过程的不断重组。社区地表动力学建模系统（CSDMS）支持对这些和其他地球表面过程的科学研究：土壤侵蚀，冰川作用，河流沉积，海岸变化，海底过程以及许多可能影响人类生活和基础设施的自然现象。CSDMS专注于计算机模型的开发和应用，帮助研究人员和其他专业人员了解这些过程及其对人类活动的潜在影响。该组织在三个主要领域提供支持：社区，计算和教育。面向社区的活动包括维持一个互动式在线数据库，以分享研究软件和其他资源，主办年度科学会议，并为讲习班和相关活动提供后勤支助。计算相关服务包括开发用于运行和耦合过程模型的软件技术，托管高性能计算资源，为科学家提供技术计算协助，以及设计和推广研究软件的通用标准和最佳实践。教育活动包括各种技术主题的研讨会，以及基于网络的在线教育材料库，如动画，演讲幻灯片和实验室练习。CSDMS社区解决了与地球表面，地层及其随时间变化有关的广泛科学问题。一个基本的目标是开发一个不断改进的知识体系，预测地球表面的动态：形成过程的物理，生物和化学如何运作，沉积物和溶质的运动如何塑造海景和景观，系统如何对自然和人类的强迫做出反应，以及这些过程如何产生测深，地形和地层。CSDMS网络基础设施的发展通过设计接口标准和提供框架服务来解决科学软件集成和标准化方面的根本挑战。在过去五年CSDMS主要进展的基础上，计划下一阶段的新技术将通过扩展的CSDMS软件栈，为模型用户到模型开发人员提供简单的途径。增强核心功能以允许平滑的数据模型集成将在模型验证、不确定性量化和模型数据合成机会方面提供一个台阶式的变化。强大的CSDMS网络工具套件中的新地理空间功能将使预测建模达到一个新的复杂水平。通过简化模型-数据耦合过程，CSDMS通过允许社区模拟景观对气候或自然灾害变化的响应，以及对政策驱动的土地使用或工程的响应，帮助地球表面过程科学的创新。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Earth's surface is undergoing continual rearrangement of its landscapes, coastlines, and soils by processes such as landslides, floods, and storm waves. The Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System (CSDMS) supports scientific research into these and other Earth-surface processes: soil erosion, glaciation, river sedimentation, coastal change, sea-floor processes, and many natural phenomena that can impact human life and infrastructure. CSDMS focuses on the development and applications of computer models that help researchers and other professionals understand these processes and their potential impacts on human activity. The organization provides support in three main areas: community, computing, and education. Community-oriented activity includes maintaining an interactive online database for sharing of research software and other resources, hosting an annual scientific conference, and providing logistical support for workshops and related events. Computing-related services include developing software technology for running and coupling process models, hosting high-performance computing resources, providing technical computing assistance to scientists, and designing and promoting common standards and best practices for research software. Educational activities include workshops on various technical topics, and a web-based repository of online educational materials, such as animations, lecture slides, and laboratory exercises.The CSDMS community addresses a broad range of scientific questions that bear on Earth's surface, its stratigraphy, and their changes over time. A fundamental goal is to develop an ever-improving body of knowledge that predicts the dynamics of Earth's surface: how the physics, biology, and chemistry of formative processes operate, how the movement of sediments and solutes shapes the seascape and landscape, how the system reacts to natural and human forcing, and how the processes give rise to bathymetry, topography, and stratigraphy. CSDMS cyberinfrastructure developments address fundamental challenges in integration and standardization of scientific software by designing interface standards and providing framework services. Building on major CSDMS advances of the past five years, new technology planned for the next phase will allow for easy pathways from model user to model developer, through an expanded CSDMS software stack. Enhancing core functionality to allow for smooth data-model integration will offer a step change in model validation, uncertainty quantification, and model-data synthesis opportunities. New geospatial capabilities in the suite of robust CSDMS cybertools will bring predictive modeling to a new level of sophistication. By easing the process of model-data coupling, CSDMS aids innovation in the science of Earth-surface processes by allowing the community to simulate landscape response to changes in climate or natural hazards, as well as to policy-driven land-use or engineering.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.