PEcAn 1.4.5 : PRELES + CRUNCEP
This release requires an update to the config file in PEcAn web interface. Without this change the web interface will not work. See config.php changes.
Following are the major new features of this release. Besides these new features many bugs have been fixed, see milestone 1.4.5 list of issues or complete list of commits.
New Models
This release now adds support for the PRELES model.
PRELES
The PREdiction of Light use efficiency, Evapotranspiration, and Soil water (PRELES) model was developed by a team at the Natural Resources Institute Finland with the goal to "develop a semi-empirical, intermediate-complexity model of evapotranspiration and its coupling with canopy photosynthesis" (Peltoniemi et al 2015). Calibrated for boreal regions, it uses common meteorological drivers (temperature, pressure, precipitation, photosynthetically active radiation, and CO2) to predict GPP and water balance (soil water, evaporation, and transpiration). It offers comparatively quick analyses, due to its parsimonious code, making it a unique choice among our suite of model options.
New Met Data
This release adds support for CRUNCEP
CRUNCEP
The Climate Research Unit, National Centers for Environmental Prediction (CRUNCEP) Multi-Scale Synthesis and Terrestrial Model Intercomparison Project (MsTMIP) data set provides climatology data that have been standardized and aggregated for use as input to carbon cycle models at a global (0.5-degree resolution) scale. The data were integrated into gridded global collections of meteorological variables (precipitation, air temperature, air specific humidity, pressure, downward longwave radiation, downward shortwave radiation, and wind speed) and has 6-hour temporal resolution between the years 1901-2010. Using PEcAn’s CRUNCEP function, a user can download a dataset containing these variables. A full description of the data can be found here; https://daac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/dsviewer.pl?ds_id=1220.
Web Interface
The web interface now allows the user to login using their credentials, event if the flag authorization required is not set. Any run started when logged in will be recorded as belonging to the logged in user. Only users logged in can now delete workflows.
Users can now filter the history page, by their own runs, those that are available locally, succeeded and by textual search (in notes, model, site).
Notes are no longer an advanced feature, but can now be added during the input section.
config.php changes
A major change has been done to the web interface configuration files. Please make sure to update your config.php, without these changes your web interface will not allow you to do any runs!
The variables $hostlist, $qsuboptions and $qsublist have been merged into a single variable called $hostlist. This list has a list of all hosts that are shown in the host pull down list, as well as any options for qsub. This now also allows you to specify a folder on the remote system to use. All runs will use this remote folder! Please see the example.config.php
The following variables are no longer used : $qsuboptions, $qsublist, $ed_soil, $ed_inputs and can be safely removed from you config.php (after fixing the above).
Additional changes
PEcAn now leverages of Travis CI for continuous integration. To use this in your own branches and forks of PEcAn make sure you have merged in the master branch from PEcAn and created an account on Travis CI. Once that is done you should be able to flip the switch for PEcAn and it will start to build automatically anytime you push changes to your branches/fork.
This patch also marks a change to documentation. We have migrated our github wiki to gitbook and will no longer update the wiki on github. It will allow for easier exportation of PecAn documentation (pdf, epub, mobi, web) as well as make it easier to gain feedback from users (inline commenting).
Known Bugs
The NARR met product will not be processed locally from raw global to model/site specific format and properly added to the database. Unless a global NARR met file exists and is added to BETY, selecting NARR as the met driver for your model will create an error. Those wishing to use NARR are strongly encouraged to select the "Brown Dog" option so that the met is processed remotely rather than locally.
Downloads
The latest version of the VM can be downloaded from NCSA
Citations
Peltoniemi, M., Pulkkinen, M., Aurela, M., Pumpanen, J.,Kolari, P., Makela, A.(2015)."A semi-empirical model of boreal-forest gross primary production , evapotranspiration , and soil water — calibration and sensitivity analysis". Boreal Environment Research, 20(2), 151-171.