Parallel System for Ecological Modeling
Funded by the NSF



This project will provide a parallel implementation of ELM (Everglades Landscape Model) on the Beowulf cluster as a means of decreasing its execution time.

Addresses four issues:

1. Optimal static partitioning of data cells in ELM

2. Integration of the canal routing into ELM

3. Integration of the dynamic fire model into ELM

4. Implementation under the NNT-SMS/MPI environments and performance analysis using available tools

To run the ELM on the Beowulf, we must first port SMS to the Beowulf architecture. We will make this port available to NOAA for free distribution, permitting the many existing SMS applications to run on other Beowulf clusters around the country. Once the SMS/Beowulf implementation of the ELM is completed, we will extend the parallel modeling technique to other ecological models by porting another SFWMD model. This work should allow us to identify commonalities between the two implementation processes. That information will be used to form a model-independent technique for parallelizing environmental models that are based on rectilinear topologies.