Lund-Potsdam-Jena General Ecosystem Simulator (LPJ-GUESS)

LPJ-GUESS

LPJ-GUESS also forms the vegetation component of the EC-Earth Earth System Model, https://ec-earth.org, a large European collaboration.

LPJ-GUESS is a process-based dynamic vegetation-terrestrial ecosystem model designed for regional or global studies. Models of this kind are commonly known as dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs). Given data on regional climate conditions, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, and management, it can predict structural, compositional and functional properties of the ecosystems of major climate zones of the Earth.
Outputs include vegetation composition and cover in terms of major species or plant functional types (PFTs), biomass and soil organic matter carbon pools, leaf area index (LAI), net primary production (NPP), net ecosystem carbon balance, carbon emissions from wildfires, biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), evapotranspiration, runoff, and nitrogen pools and fluxes. The latest version (4.1) includes further outputs and functionalities such as methane emissions, soil nitrogen chemistry, permafrost dynamics, and a new wildfire model.

Version-controlled community code repository containing release versions of the model, as well as various project-specific branches.
Utilities for the processing of output data and preparation of input data.

Release versions of the code and the publication library can be accessed through the website:
https://web.nateko.lu.se/lpj-guess/index.html

By agreement we can sometimes help provide driver data sets and input/output code for historical (hindcast) simulations.
The software comes with documentation that should help and the source code itself is well structured and commented. However, some basic skills in C/C++ are a minimum requirement in the absence of a support agreement.

The steering group at Lund University comprises:
Paul Miller
Thomas Pugh
Benjamin Smith