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Summer Research Project 2020

  • Title: Provenance and Computer Modeling: The impacts of future hurricanes under climate change
  • Group Project Leader: Emery Boose
  • Mentors: Emery Boose; Barbara Lerner; Jonathan Thompson
  • Collaborators: Danelle Laflower
  • Project Description:

    Please note: This project will work in collaboration as a group project with other projects listed under "Provenance and Computer Modeling"

    Over-arching Intellectual Theme
    This project will bring together two important applications of computer technology in science: (1) the use of simulation models to better understand physical and biological processes in the real world, and (2) the use of provenance to record and better understand how analytical tools such as models are used by scientists. The modeling sub-project will explore the impacts of future hurricanes in New England under various climate change scenarios. The provenance sub-project will develop software tools that use provenance and evaluate how effectively these and existing tools support scientists in their work, with a focus on computer modeling.

    The impacts of future hurricanes under climate change
    Mentors: Boose & Thompson

    Hurricanes are a major natural disturbance in New England and throughout much of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and the Caribbean. This subproject will use updated versions of the HURRECON and EXPOS models to explore the impacts of future hurricanes in New England. In previous studies, these models were used to reconstruct actual historical hurricanes in New England (since 1620) and Puerto Rico (since 1851). For this study, the National Hurricane Center’s database of Atlantic hurricanes since 1851 (HURDAT2) and current assessments by hurricane meteorologists of the possible impacts of climate change on hurricane track, frequency, and intensity will provide the basis for simulating future hurricanes under various climate change scenarios. If time permits, results will be used as input to the LANDIS-II model used by the Future Scenarios Project at Harvard Forest. The goal will be to improve our understanding of how hurricane impacts may change in the future and how these changes may influence long-term forest dynamics and human land use across New England.

    This sub-project will provide an opportunity to become familiar with existing spatial models of physical disturbance and forest dynamics, to develop R scripts to extend and link these models, to learn GIS tools for R, and to evaluate the effectiveness of provenance tools for supporting script development and for recording the details of repeated model runs.

    Desired Skills: Students must have good computational and programming skills and experience with (or willingness to learn) R.

    Future Scenarios Project website: https://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/other-tags/future-scenarios

  • Readings:

    Boose, E. R., Chamberlin, K. E., Foster, D. R. 2001. Landscape and regional impacts of hurricanes in New England. Ecological Monographs 71: 27-48.

    Duveneck, M. J., Thompson, J. R., Gustafson, E. J., Liang, Y., de Bruijn, A. M. G. 2017. Recovery dynamics and climate change effects to future New England forests. Landscape Ecology 32: 1385-1397.

    Ellison, A. M. 2010. Repeatability and transparency in ecological research. Ecology 91: 2536-2539.

    Lerner, B. S., Boose, E. R., Perez, L. 2018. Using Introspection to Collect Provenance in R. Informatics, 5, 12.

    Liang, Y., Duveneck, M., Gustafson, E., Serra-Diaz, J., Thompson, J. R. 2017. How disturbance, competition and dispersal interact to prevent tree range boundaries from keeping pace with climate change. Global Change Biology. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13847

    Pasquier, T., Lau, M. K., Trisovic, A., Boose, E. R., Couturier, B., Crosas, M., Ellison, A. M., Gibson, V., Jones, C. R., Seltzer, M. 2017. If these data could talk. Nature Scientific Data, 4.

    Thompson, J. R., Simons-Legaard, E., Legaard, K., Domingo, J. B. 2016. A LANDIS-II extension for incorporating land use and other disturbances. Environmental Modelling & Software 75: 202-205.

  • Research Category: Regional Studies, Group Projects, Ecological Informatics and Modelling, Conservation and Management