WHETGEO 1D is out

WHETGEO-1D (Water HEat and Transport in GEOframe) is a physically based model simulating the water and energy budgets in a soil column. WHETGEO-1D is developed as an open-source code, adopting the Object-Oriented paradigm and a generic programming approach to improve its usability and expandability. WHETGEO-1D is fully integrated in the GEOframe/OMS3 system allowing the use of the many ancillary tools it provides. It comes on top of several years of work on engineering software, discussing and debating about Richards equation, taking care of getting appropriate integration methods in a travel that crossed hydrology, mathematics, numerics and software engineering.  Click on the figure below to access the paper.

The code is really solid and was throughly tested over the last three year by my students of the Hydrology class and in various applications. Its inputs and outputs can be analyzed by using Python and some standard Notebooks prepared to help the user to do it.  The paper has been submitted to the Geoscientific model development discussions (GMDD) and it is available for discussion to everyone and can be obtained by clicking on the Figure above. Complementary material is present in the GEOframe blog. The paper comes with its software, documentations and test and the GEOframe blog post explains where all of it is. You did a nice job Niccolò Tubini!

Here the paper on GMD.

Evaporation and Transpiration

 Evaporation and transpiration are the topics more discussed in this blog, due to the interests I grew in the last few years (almost without publishing). However, I believe I collected enough information to be able to summarize a new view on these processes. Certainly shared with others, but not so widely shared, and not already present in other posts of this blog. In this presentation, that I shrinked in less than half an hour, I tried to summarize part of my current knowledge. For complimentary information, please see the lectures I gave at the GEOframe Winter School, or during the class of hydrology I do. 

The main result are a complete understanding of what the Penman-Monteith approach is, and that soil evaporation and transpiration can be differentiated from  the computational point of view because of the different dynamics of their energy and water budgets.