LPJ-GUESS (Smith
et al. 2001) is an
object-oriented, modular framework for modelling the dynamics of
ecosystem structure and functioning at scales from the patch to the
globe, and at varying levels of process detail. The framework
incorporates process-based representations of plant physiology and
ecosystem biogeochemistry, derived from the BIOME3 family of models (Haxeltine
& Prentice 1996) and LPJ-DGVM
(Sitch
et al. 2003).
Vegetation may be represented at various levels of abstraction
depending on the scale of relevance and the type of output required. In
the most general (and computatively efficient) mode, each average plant
individual represents the entire regional population of a plant
functional type (PFT), as in LPJ-DGVM. For modelling at the
sub-regional scale, or with more finely differentiated PFTs, vegetation
structure and dynamics may be represented in more detail, with each
modelled plant individual corresponding to an annual cohort, or
individual plant. LPJ-GUESS is the main platform for modelling
activities within the ecosystem modelling group of the Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystems Analysis at Lund University, where it has been applied in a number of past and
current projects, including MORPHEUS
(Hickler
et al. 2004),
ATEAM
(Schröter et al. 2005),
EPIDEMIE
(Gritti et al. 2006),
PRUDENCE
(Morales et al. 2007),
ENSEMBLES
(Hickler et al. 2008), ALARM
(Thomas et al. 2008),
DECVEG
(Miller et al. 2008), CARBO-North
and Mistra-SWECIA.
A list of LPJ-GUESS publications is available here.
An educational version of LPJ-GUESS (Windows executable, no source code) is available for download.
Research users should contact us first.