Integrating GLEAM Earth Observation data strategy usage within GEOframe

To better understand the previous discussions, let's examine the specific case of GLEAM 3.0 (Martens et al., 2017) and 4.0. GLEAM (Miralles et al., 2025) is a global evapotranspiration product built on multiple Earth Observation (EO) resources. Since evapotranspiration (ET) cannot be measured directly, it must be inferred or modeled from available data. AS you know, GEOframe is our system for doing hydrology. For GEOframe methodologies in catchments application, please see this previous post.

Actually GLEAM operates at 0.1-degree spatial resolution (approximately 11 km grid cells), which is adequate for global analyses but insufficient for our purposes. Our objective requires information at 1km (approximateli 0.01-degree resolution), particularly for applications in complex terrain such as the Alps, where significant topographic variation occurs within very small areas.

From Miralles et al. 2025. References can be recovered there

Earth Observation Resources in GLEAM

According to Miralles et al. (2025), GLEAM utilizes the EO and reanalysis resources listed in Table 1. Below is an analysis of how each resource could be integrated with GEOframe:

Radiation

Current GLEAM approach: 0.1-0.5 degree resolution GEOframe implementation: Point-wise calculations using local solar radiation, filtered through cloud interception and atmospheric scattering models, then topographically corrected using digital elevation models.

Limitations: The coarse satellite resolution is inadequate for rugged terrain. Additionally, GEOframe's current empirical methods lack reliability, often requiring radiation estimates from randomly selected points within catchments, reducing representativeness.

Potential improvements: Satellite data could be fused with ground measurements to enhance overall accuracy.

Air Temperature

GEOframe implementation: Kriging interpolation with drift using ground station data.

Assessment: Generally reliable since temperature varies gradually across space, though canopy effects may introduce complications.

Precipitation

GEOframe implementation: Ground station measurements interpolated using kriging (typically without drift, as drift was found insignificant). Event-specific variograms are employed.

Key challenge: Determining whether kriging interpolation accurately captures storm spatial patterns. Satellite and radar data could provide valuable validation and improvement opportunities. See also the last post here.

Wind Speed

Application: Required for Penman-Monteith formulations.

Potential integration: ERA5 reanalysis data could supplement ground station measurements through data fusion/assimilation approaches, pending reliability validation (see Azimi et al., 2025)

Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD)

Current use: Input for Penman-Monteith solutions (D'Amato and Rigon, 2025).

Technical note: VPD represents the temperature difference between emitting surfaces and air. Understanding EO estimation methods could enable valuable comparative analyses with the Prospero model (Bottazzi et al., 2021; D'Amato et al, 2025), where VPD emerges from energy budget calculations.

Carbon Dioxide Concentration

Application: Controls transpiration conductance in both Jarvis and Ball-Berry-Leuning parameterizations.

Current status: Available as input parameter in GEOframe for Penman-Monteith and Prospero models but not utilized in Priestley-Taylor formulations.

Snow Water Equivalent (SWE)

GEOframe approach: Calculated from precipitation, temperature, and snowpack evolution models. It should not be confused with Snow Covered Area (SCA).

Improvement opportunities: MODIS snow products offer superior resolution compared to GLEAM's 25 km resolution. For mountainous terrain with 5000 m elevation changes within 25 km, higher-resolution products could provide significant improvements.

Surface Soil Moisture

GEOframe implementation: Prognostic variable within root zone compartment.

Integration potential: Could enable GEOframe calibration if EO resolution and reliability improve. GEOframe soil moisture could be upscaled to match EO data resolution for comparative analysis.

Vegetation Optical Depth (VOD)

Definition: Proxy for vegetation biomass and cumulative transpiration (assuming linear correlation).

Current status: Not implemented in GEOframe.

Integration potential: Could be connected to Leaf Area Index (LAI), which is used in both interception and transpiration calculations.

Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetic Radiation (fPAR)

Current status: Not used in GEOframe, which employs total radiation instead.

Advantage: Available at appropriate spatial scales for potential integration.

Leaf Area Index (LAI)

Applications: Useful for both interception and transpiration calculations (when using Penman-Monteith or Prospero models).

Integration potential: High, given its direct relevance to existing GEOframe processes.

Vegetation Height

Value: Excellent spatial resolution and direct application in aerodynamic resistance calculations.

Integration status: Not currently used but could be easily incorporated into GEOframe.

Land Cover Fraction

Current status: Not implemented in GEOframe.

Potential application: Could enhance transpiration estimations.

Soil Properties

Current status: Not utilized, as no GEOframe parameters currently depend on soil characteristics.

Future applications: Could become relevant if replacing reservoir-based root zone approaches with simplified versions of WHETGEO (Tubini and Rigon, 2022) or GEOSPACE (D'Amato and Rigon, 2025b).

GLEAM Methodological Components and GEOframe Integration

Rainfall Interception

GLEAM approach: Utilizes the van Dijk-Bruijnzeel model (van Dijk et al., 2001), developed from global experimental datasets.

GEOframe current implementation: Uses the Gash model.

Integration opportunity: Adding a van Dijk-Bruijnzeel component to GEOframe could enhance model compatibility and performance. Notably, Zhong et al. (2022) successfully constrained interception estimates using fPAR, providing valuable insights for EO integration.

Potential Evapotranspiration

GLEAM approach: Employs the Penman equation for potential ET estimation.

GEOframe compatibility: This methodology is already available in GEOframe, enabling direct reproduction of GLEAM's approach. However, D'Amato et al. (2025) implement a more sophisticated Penman-Monteith formulation than GLEAM, allowing for comparative analyses.

Aerodynamic conductance: GLEAM uses Thom's equation, which differs from GEOframe's current formulation but could be easily implemented. Both approaches require roughness length and zero displacement height parameters that can be derived from EO vegetation retrievals.

Soil Moisture Integration

GLEAM4 advancement: Incorporates data assimilation using European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) surface soil moisture data through a Newtonian Nudging scheme. The method decomposes soil moisture into anomalies and computes uncertainties using triple collocation (Miralles et al., 2025).

GEOframe current approach: Relies solely on root zone reservoirs for ET sources.

Enhancement opportunities:

• Adding ET sources from groundwater reservoirs through minor modifications to GEOframe's groundwater component
• Implementing GLEAM4's multi-layer running water balance approach, which considers constant root depth per land cover fraction

Physical realism considerations: While GLEAM4 moved from reservoir models (similar to GEOframe) to multi-layer approaches, GEOframe could implement GEOSPACE (D'Amato et al., 2025) to achieve superior physical realism compared to GLEAM4. However, the reliability of satellite-derived soil moisture estimates requires careful validation.

Stress Function Formulations

GEOframe current approach: GEOET (GEOframe's transpiration component) employs empirical schemes following Jarvis or Ball-Berry-Leuning (BBL) parameterizations.

GLEAM4 innovation: Introduces an innovative deep neural network approach replacing traditional semi-empirical stress computations. As described by the authors: "GLEAM4 replaces the original semi-empirical computation based on soil moisture and vegetation optical depth (VOD) with the deep neural network approach presented in Koppa et al., 2022."

Neural network advantages: The approach recognizes that actual-to-potential transpiration ratios are controlled by numerous environmental variables with non-linear interactions, including:

• Soil moisture and VOD
• Vapor pressure deficit (VPD)
• Incoming solar radiation (SWi)
• Air temperature (Ta)
• CO2 concentration
• Wind speed (u)
• Leaf Area Index (LAI)

Training methodology: The neural network learns universal transpiration stress functions using global eddy-covariance and sap flow data, with separate parameterizations for tall and short vegetation.

Implementation potential: Incorporating this neural network approach could represent a significant alternative for GEOframe, moving beyond traditional empirical formulations to data-driven, physically-informed methods.

Implementation Considerations

Full understanding and implementation of these methodological improvements requires careful examination of Miralles et al. (2025) and its supporting literature. The integration of these approaches could substantially enhance GEOframe's capabilities while maintaining compatibility with global EO datasets.

Conclusions

While GLEAM provides a comprehensive framework using multiple EO resources, significant opportunities exist for improving spatial resolution and integrating these datasets with process-based models like GEOframe. The main challenges involve resolution limitations and the need for validation of empirical methods against ground-truth data. The methodological advances in GLEAM4, particularly the neural network-based stress functions and improved data assimilation schemes, offer promising directions for enhancing GEOframe's predictive capabilities. Overall GLEAM should not be considered as a EO dataset but a modeling product. Describing it as an EO product makes it more objective that it is actually. Other global products on ET are available. Ecostress (Pierrat et al., 2025) is a recent notable example. A scrutiny similat to the one applied to GLEAM can be made with that platform too, but I let you as an exercise.

This post is part of the dissemination material of the Space It Up project funded by the Italian Space Agency, ASI, and the Ministry of University and Research, MUR, under contract n. 2024-5-E.0 - CUP n. I53D24000060005.

References

• Azimi, Shima, Christian Massari, Gaia Roati, Silvia Barbetta, and Riccardo Rigon. 2025. “A New Tool for Correcting the Spatial and Temporal Pattern of Global Precipitation Products across Mountainous Terrain: Precipitation and Hydrological Analysis.” Journal of Hydrology 660 (133530): 133530. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2025.133530.
• Bottazzi, M., M. Bancheri, M. Mobilia, and G. Bertoldi. 2021. “Comparing Evapotranspiration Estimates from the Geoframe-Prospero Model with Penman–Monteith and Priestley-Taylor Approaches under Different Climate Conditions.” WATER. https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/13/9/1221.
• D’Amato, Concetta, and Riccardo Rigon. 2025. “Elementary Mathematics Helps to Shed Light on the Transpiration Budget under Water Stress.” Ecohydrology: Ecosystems, Land and Water Process Interactions, Ecohydrogeomorphology 18 (2). https://doi.org/10.1002/eco.70009.
• D’Amato, Concetta, Niccolò Tubini, and Riccardo Rigon. 2025. “A Component Based Modular Treatment of the Soil-Plant-Atmosphere Continuum: The GEOSPACE Framework (v.1.2.9).” https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-4128.
• D’Amato, Concetta, Niccolò Tubini, and Riccardo Rigon. 2025. “A Component Based Modular Treatment of the Soil-Plant-Atmosphere Continuum: The GEOSPACE Framework (v.1.2.9).” https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-4128.
• Dijk, A. I. J. M. van, and L. A. Bruijnzeel. 2001. “Modelling Rainfall Interception by Vegetation of Variable Density Using an Adapted Analytical Model. Part 1. Model Description.” Journal of Hydrology 247 (3–4): 230–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0022-1694(01)00392-4.
• Koppa, Akash, Dominik Rains, Petra Hulsman, Rafael Poyatos, and Diego G. Miralles. 2022. “A Deep Learning-Based Hybrid Model of Global Terrestrial Evaporation.” Nature Communications 13 (1): 1912. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-29543-7.
• Martens, Brecht, Diego G. Miralles, Hans Lievens, Robin Van Der Schalie, Richard A. M. De Jeu, Diego Fernández-Prieto, Hylke E. Beck, Wouter A. Dorigo, and Niko E. C. Verhoest. 2017. “GLEAM v3: Satellite-Based Land Evaporation and Root-Zone Soil Moisture.” Geoscientific Model Development 10 (5): 1903–25. http://www.geosci-model-dev-discuss.net/gmd-2016-162/.
• Pierrat, Zoe Amie, Adam J. Purdy, Gregory Halverson, Joshua B. Fisher, Kanishka Mallick, Madeleine Pascolini-Campbell, Youngryel Ryu, et al. 2025. “Evaluation of ECOSTRESS Collection 2 Evapotranspiration Products: Strengths and Uncertainties for Evapotranspiration Modeling.” Water Resources Research 61 (6). https://doi.org/10.1029/2024wr039404.
• Miralles, Diego G., Olivier Bonte, Akash Koppa, Oscar M. Baez-Villanueva, Emma Tronquo, Feng Zhong, Hylke E. Beck, et al. 2025. “GLEAM4: Global Land Evaporation and Soil Moisture Dataset at 0.1 Resolution from 1980 to near Present.” Scientific Data 12 (1): 416. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-04610-y.
• Zhong, Feng, Shanhu Jiang, Albert I. J. M. van Dijk, Liliang Ren, Jaap Schellekens, and Diego G. Miralles. 2022. “Revisiting Large-Scale Interception Patterns Constrained by a Synthesis of Global Experimental Data.” https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2022-155.

The GEOframe Community Publication Policy v. 1.0

After GEOframe is becoming widely used we believe it is time to set some fair rules for participation to GEOframe related publications, Since the components are usually released under GPL3 license, it allows the of the code almost without any restriction (except the maintaining the derived code Open Source and freely available), a condition mitigated by the fact that different OMS components can be released under other licenses.  However, because all of our recognition derives from publications (and proper citations), it is worth to remark what written below:

GEOframe Community Publication Policy (GCPP v1.0)

1. Introduction

GEOframe-NewAge is an open-source, semi-distributed, component-based hydrological modeling system. It was developed in Java and based on the environmental modeling framework Object Modeling System V3 (OMS3). 

The core of the project was born from the idea of Professor Rigon and mainly developed at the department of civil, environmental and mechanical engineering of University of Trento, Italy. During the last decade, GEOframe community grew and now is made of many scientists around the world who share their work, codes, knowledge and experiences for the benefit of all GEOframe users, whilst pursuing their individual research interests and careers.

Therefore, giving appropriate credits for the intellectual input through co-authorships or citations should be the proper functioning of the community.

This document sets out how members of the GEOframe community should recognise the intellectual contribution of the GEOframe community’s members. 

1. Principal web references

In the following, the principal GEOframe web references, where you can find the latest achievements, developments, publications, code versions, courses and ideas are reported: 

- http://abouthydrology.blogspot.com/search/label/GEOFRAME 

- http://geoframe.blogspot.com

- https://github.com/geoframecomponents

- https://github.com/GEOframeOMSProjects 

• https://osf.io/fk8ta/

1. General principles

The formal, legal conditions that govern the use of GEOframe at present are given by the G.P.L. v 3. Each GEOframe component can have its own license though. 

This Policy applies to all uses of GEOframe products, including but not limited to data and computer code, for research and teaching. It is not intended to restrict what can be done with them, rather to ensure appropriate acknowledgement and communication between users and developers. This policy will be updated regularly.

A developer is any person whose expertise has either significantly influenced the design of GEOframe code or who has written code, with no distinction between scientific and technical inputs.

Developers are encouraged to publish their work in reasonable time, while potential users should approach developers early in their study to avoid duplication or wasted effort on new developments. Developers may reserve the right for the first scientific application of their scheme and will be able to advise if and when co-authorship, citation or acknowledgement is appropriate. 

A list of new developments and the scientists responsible for them will be maintained on the GEOframe website. These contributions should be recognised by citations.

When writing the source code of a component, GEOframe developers should consider the following:

• Provide a brief description of what the program does.
• State the authors of the code and the following modifiers.
• Describe the input required to run the component and its output.
• Some notes concerning the limitations, and the algorithms used within the component. A wish-list for the future version and/or information.
• Articles or books which have inspired the codex or justified its necessity. Users are encouraged to cite these papers in their own work.
• A more detailed documentation about the code can be found in (link alla pagina con la documentazione delle componenti e il template per LaTeX.
• If you want to contribute code or documentation, create pull requests, we will consider them.
• Avoid practices of code-washing.

Ideally a committed code should conform to the rules required by Joss. 

Acknowledgments should be considered for a wider list of scientists who contributed to the modelling system, but whose contributions may not be documented in publications. A list of such scientists will be maintained on the GEOframe web page

When writing a paper, GEOframe users and developers should consider the following:

Co-authorship  

• Is expected if your published research benefited from a new development, i.e. the development influenced your study to the extent that it was discussed in the paper. 
• In order to favor early publication of new components (or new algorithms), when a paper fundamentally relies on a code which contains a new, unpublished algorithm, the inclusion of the author's algorithm should be considered. ***
• Is expected if your research required substantial direct input from a developer, e.g. to make substantial modifications to the code that you used, to help design the experiments etc.
• Should be considered for a wider list of scientists who contributed to the modelling system, but whose contributions may not be documented in publications. A list of such scientists will be maintained on the GEOframe web page.

Acknowledgements 

• Should be considered for scientists involved in GEOframe code developments that have become established.

Citation of a published paper 

• Is expected if a citable paper describing a development exists. A narrative description of the model and a list of papers describing developments will be maintained on the GEOframe web page.

Please be generous in offering credit for other people’s work, as everyone benefits in the end. Use best judgement and, if in doubt, err on the side of inclusiveness.

*** In order to facilitate the recognition of new contributions that deserve considering co-authorship, we establish the following. Untagged components should be considered not usable/unstable/unsafe/new. Tagged components should be the only one to be used freely but if their tag number ends with "9" this means that the co-authorship has to be discussed. Other tag numbers let you use the component without any problem. So version 1.0 can be used freely. For version 0.09 co-autorship should be discussed (even if the low number suggests some caution). In any case these limitation perdure for at most 1 year. Therefore a 15.0009 version could be used freely after 1 year of embargo in any case. 

For the readers can also be interesting to consider the reading of About Authorship in Hydrology.

The GEOframe Schools Index

The number of GEOframe schools has grown regularly during the last years, since 2019.  We think that it could be interesting to keep track of them and their material in a unique place, and this is it. The most recent are first, the initial one the last.

Rock balancing done by Peter Juhl, author of  "Center of Gravity: A Guide to the Practice of Rock Balancing." 

Links contains presentations, video, reference to code. Obviously the most recent material is more up-to-date but we did not cover the same topics along the years and therefore it could be interesting to browse also the old stuff. Please notice that the Winter School address Catchment modelling with lumped models (Hydrological Dynamical Systems), i.e. GEOframe-NewAGE modelling solutions; the Summer Schools are dedicated  to process-based modelling, i.e. WHETGEO and GEO-SPACE.  (Water, Heat, Energy and Transport in GEOframe, GEOframe Soil Plants Atmosphere Continuum Estimator).

• GEOframe Winter School 2026
• GEOframe Winter School 2025
• GEOframe Summer School as IIT Mumbai 2025
• GEOframe Winter School 2024
• GEOframe Winter School 2023
• GEOframe Summer School 2022
• GEOframe Winter School 2022
• GEOframe Summer School 2021
• GEO frame Short Course for AdbPO 2021
• GEOframe Winter School 2021
• GEOframe Winter School 2020
• GEOframe Winter School 2019

GEOframe parts are also taught in the Classes of Hydrology (in Italian) and Hydrological Modelling (in English and Italian) of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

• Biosphere Atmosphere and Climate (BACI2025) 2025
• Hydrological Modeling 2025
• Hydrology 2025
• Hydrological Modelling 2024
• Hydrology 2024
• Hydrological Modelling 2023
• Hydrology 2023
• Hydrological Modelling 2022
• Hydrology 2022
• Hydrological Modeling  2021
• Hydrology 2021
• Hydrological Modelling 2020
• Hydrology 2020
• Hydrology 2019

GEOframe-New AGE material for beginners

Dear User or Dear Explorer,

Here we aim to summarize some of the material related to GEOframe-NewAGE. The main source is certainly the GEOframe blog:

• The GEOframe blog 

However, for a logical introduction, it may be useful to start here:

• GEOframe Essentials 

The most recent material on GEOframe-NewAGE is from the latest school, accessible from this point:

• The 2024 GEOframe Winter School

By following the links for each day, you can download the slides and watch the lesson videos. 

• and previous Schools and material

Another useful resource is provided through hydrological modeling tutorials:

• Hydrological Modelling 2023

GEOframe's infrastructure is based on the Object Modelling System v3:

• OMS3 essentials

Various papers and applications related to GEOframe have been written and developed; you can find them here:

• GEOframe blogs posts in AboutHydrology

For any further assistance, the GEOframe crew can be reached at geoframe-schools@googlegroups.com.

Please feel free to reach out  us if you have any questions. Next Winter School  on GEOframe-NewAGE will be in January 2025 from 7 to11 in Trento University.  Next Summer School (on Land-Atmosphere interactions will be June 2-6 2025.  This Summer will be holding one Summer School on GEOframe-NewAGE in El Cairo and one in Mumbay (both the last weeks of July).

GEOframe Summer School 2021 (moved to early Autumn for this year)

September 27 - September 28, 2021/ October 4 - October 7, 2021

Scientific Committee: Prof. Riccardo Rigon, Ph.D.; Prof. Giuseppe Formetta, Ph.D; Ing. Niccolò Tubini, Ing. Concetta d’Amato, Ing. Marialaura Bancheri, Ph.D.

Organizing Institutions:

Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, University of Trento
Center Agriculture Food Environment, University of Trento
Institute for Agricultural and Forest Systems in the Mediterranean, National Research Council, Ercolano NA, Italy

CONTENTS

The Earth’s Critical Zone (CZ) is defined as the heterogeneous, near surface environment in which complex interactions involving rock, soil, water, air, and living organisms regulate the natural habitat and determine the availability of life-sustaining resources (National Research Council, 2001). Clear interest in studying the CZ is spurred on by ever-increasing pressure due to the growth in human population and climatic changes.
Main topics will embrace the water flow (and heat transport) in porous media, the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum, and inverse problems. The aim of the course is to enable participants to run their own simulations with the GEOframe tools prepared to simulate the critical zone. They are process-based (e.g. Fatichi et al, 2016) tools, whose ambition is to simulate the processes of infiltration, heat transport and evaporation and transpiration. The GSS2021 deals mainly with the 1D tools and introduces the 2D ones called WHETGEO (1D and 2D), GEOframe-Prospero and LysGEO.
Besides the lectures and the hands-on sessions, the Summer School is the occasion for discussion and experience exchange among senior scholars and young researchers.
The School will be online on the Zoom platform.

PARTICIPANTS' BACKGROUND

Admissions are reserved to up to 30, PhD students and postdoctoral students, young researchers willing to learn the use of the GEOframe tools envisioned for the study of infiltration, energy budget, vegetation transpiration, water budget with process-based models

All students are asked to upload a CV and a motivation letter when applying.

WORKLOAD AND CREDITS
The Summer School which is to be held in English, consists of 6 hours/day of activities for 6 days. The first two days, 27, 28 of September the installation of the GEOframe-OMS system tools and the general characteristics of the system. Lectures will be brief, dedicated to informatics and most of the time will be used for supporting participants’ installations.
The other four days will cover simulation of infiltration with WHETGEO-1D and 2D, with Prospero Transpiration model, and with the LysGEO model. There will be lectures on the hydrological processes implemented and applications to use cases.

LOCATION
Due to the Covid-19 emergency all the activities will be held via Zoom.

PARTICIPATION COSTS

The cost is free for Students of the Hydrological Modelling Classes at the University of Trento, for Ph.D. students of the University of Trento DICAM and C3A programs, for the participants of the WATZON PRIN project and for all who wants to participate without having a certificate of GEOframe proficiency. Subscription to the class is necessary to receive the information to participate. For those who want the certificate, the Course costs 180 Euros. In any case the certificate is issued after the presentation of a small project of simulations for which appropriate tutoring will be given during and after the School.

CONTACTS

For further information write to: abouthydrology@google.com or to the Secretary of the Class dott. Lorena Galante, lorena.galante@unitn.it

OTHER INFORMATION

The GSS2021 talks and labs will be recorded and made publicly available during the School for self-training through the GEOframe blog (http://geoframe.blogspot.com).

Foreseen schedule

The details of the program are still to be defined

September 27-28:

These days are dedicated to those who never approached the GEOframe system and pursue the understanding of how it works. Who already knows how GEOframe works or have already installed it for different purposes than those of this School, can skip them

• Introduction to the Object Modelling System and GEOframe Infrastructures (Verona 2022 environment)
• Installation of OMS and GEOframe Verona
• Brief introduction to Jupyter notebooks and Python
• Few examples and Problem solving

October 4:

This morning is mostly dedicated to fill theory of the processes investigated by this School on GEOframe, meaning infiltration in soil, the basics of Richards/Richardson equation to which follow some exercises. The afternoon will be used to discuss issues related to the application of different boundary conditions, different parameterizations of the soil water retention curves.

Morning session

• The Richardson-Richards equation
• The equation and its parts, and three form of the equation
• Soil Water Retention Curves
• Hydraulic conductivity models
• Numerical issues to keep in mind

Afternoon session

• Practical session on Richardson-Richards equatio
• one homogeneous layer
• stratified layers
• playing with boundary conditions
• Presenting the results with Jupyter Notebooks

October 5:

This day is dedicated to discuss the problem of the surface boundary condition.

Morning session

• Surface boundary condition and numerical issues
• Practical session simulating:
• Horton process
• Dunnian process
• Presenting the results with Jupyter Notebooks

Afternoon session

• Individual exercises with support

October 6:

This day is dedicated to the bi-dimensional case of the Richardson-Richards equation and to present the radiation energy budget.

Morning session

• Installing the software for building unstructured grids
• Manage 2D unstructured grids.
• Practical session on WHETGEO-2D on some pre-prepared cases

Afternoon session

• Theory of radiation energy budget
• Practical session on computing the radiation energy budget

October 7:

Day four is dedicated to the LysGEO model, evaporation and transpiration modelling and their coupling with R2.

Morning session

• Evapotranspiration theory and equations in the Prospero model
• Use of GEOframe - ET tools practices

Afternoon session

• LysGEO theory
• Practical session on LysGEO:
• Comparison between potential ET and actual ET
• Set different stress factors
• Introducing vegetation traits

Specific Documentation

The specific documentation regards papers and thesis written on the GEOframe components used in this School. Other literature, of general interest, is provided within the presentations given during the course. Practical documentation for any of the tasks is provided by means of Jupyter Notebooks, of which the general ones are reported below.



Some essential about the Object Modelling System

• Bottazzi, M, Ph.D. Thesis
• David, O., Ascough II, J. C., Lloyd, W., Green, T. R., Rojas, K. W., Leavesley, G. H., & Ahuja, L. R. (2013). A software engineering perspective on environmental modeling framework design: The Object Modeling System. Environmental Modelling & Software, 39, 201-213.
• Tubini, N., Ph.D. Thesis (available soon)
• Bottazzi, M., Bancheri, M., Mobilia, M., Bertoldi, G., Longobardi, A., & Rigon, R. (2021). Comparing Evapotranspiration Estimates from the GEOframe-Prospero Model with Penman–Monteith and Priestley-Taylor Approaches under Different Climate Conditions. Water, 13(9), 1221.
• Tubini, Niccolò, and Riccardo Rigon. 2021. “Implementing the Water, HEat and Transport Model in GEOframe WHETGEO-1D v.1.0: Algorithms, Informatics, Design Patterns, Open Science Features, and 1D Deployment.” https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2021-163.

Positions in snow modelling, Po River basin hydrology, soil-plant-atmosphere interactions and GEOframe system development @UniTrento

 Dear All,

I am seeking motivated  master graduated interested in working in areas related to Snow modelling, Po River basin hydrology, Soil-plant-atmosphere interactions and GEOframe system development. Below are some exciting thesis opportunities, each with potential for continuation into a Ph.D. program. Post doc positions could be considered as well for appropriate persons.

1. Snow Modelling (SUNSET PRIN Project)

This topic focuses on snow dynamics modeling using GEOframe-NewAGE and GEOtop, within the SUNSET PRIN project (Details). Opportunities include fieldwork, guided by Prof. Stefano Ferraris (University of Turin), with Dr. John Mohd Wani as co-supervisor.

2. Po River Basin Projects (ADBPo Collaboration)

The Po River Basin thesis topics align with the long-term collaboration with the Basin Authority of River Po (Details). These projects could lead to Ph.D. opportunities and professional roles.

Topics include:

- Modeling Romagna Catchments for Drought and Flood Prevention

  Focused on hourly-scale modeling for water management.

- Co-Supervisor: Ing. Gaia Roati (Po Basin Authority)

- Includes periods at the Po Basin Authority in Parma.

- Earth Observation for Po River Basin Calibration

  Systematic use of satellite data to validate and improve GEOframe-NewAGE models.

- Part of: SpaceItUp! PNRR (Italian Space Agency) and an upcoming ESA project

- Collaboration: Ing. Hossein Salehi, Fondazione Edmund Mach, and Prof. Manuela Girotto (UC Berkeley).

3. Land-Surface Interactions with the use of the GEOSPACE system and its development (EPFL collaboration, ESA Projects, EU Projects)

- Modeling Transpiration and Soil-Atmosphere Interactions

  Utilize GEOframe-NewAGE and GEOSPACE for basin-scale modeling.

- Co-Supervisor: Dr. Concetta D’Amato (EPFL, Sion Campus)

- Includes a potential study period in Sion.

- Depending on the specific topic other collaboration should be envisioned

Topics include:

- Estimating the effects of evaporation and transpiration at Po scale, integrating GEOSPACE with Earth Observation.

- Understanding the effects of soil evolution under the action of biota and under global warming.

- New parameterizations of the atmosphere - plant interactions

4. Informatics-Oriented GEOframe Development (SIM Project)

- Integrating Large Language Models with GEOframe

  Explore the potential of Generative AI for improving user interaction and programming within GEOframe.

- Transforming GEOframe into a DARTH

  Enhance the GEOframe infrastructure and Object Modelling System (OMS) codebase.

- Co-Supervisors: Prof. Giuseppe Formetta and Dr. Olaf David (Colorado State University)

- Includes a potential study period in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Additional Information

All theses involve using and extending GEOframe tools, requiring proficiency in Python and Java. Coding skills are especially critical for informatics-oriented topics.

These projects provide an excellent foundation for doctoral studies and professional development in hydrology, environmental modeling, and computational science.

Please feel free to share this information and contact me for further details.

Best regards, 

Riccardo Rigon

riccardo<dot> rigon<@>unitn<dot>it

The anticipated salary for pre-doctoral and Ph.D. students is €1,350 per month (net), plus an additional €3,000 annually for supplementary activities. For postdoctoral researchers, the net annual salary ranges from €24,000 to €30,000, depending on individual qualifications and experience. Additional income opportunities may also be available. The cost of living in the region is more affordable compared to many other European countries.

IMPORTANT !!!!

P.S. - In your response, please specify which of the above proposals you are interested in pursuing, along with a brief explanation of your motivation. Send your CV with your age and gender included. If you do not have prior experience with the GEOframe system,, we kindly request that you first enroll in our  GEOframe School (we are happy to waive your subscription fees). Please complete the enrollment and mention in your communication that you have done so.

The school has already covered the installation process and some theoretical aspects, but all materials are available online for self-paced learning. The next session will take place in January, and individuals currently in Italy are encouraged to attend in person.

GEOframe-NewAGE essentials

GEOframe is a system for doing hydrology by computer. By saying that it is a system, we emphasize that it is not a model but an infrastructure that can contain many differentiated modelling solutions (some tens of that) that are built upon models components. This is because GEOframe leverage on the Object Modelling system-framework (v3) that allows to connect modelling components to solve a specific hydrological issue together and having many alternative for its mathematical/numerical description. This infrastructure allows adapting the tools to the problems and not viceversa. In GEOframe particular attention has been dedicated to allow enhancements and additions writing the less code possible. The core code has been designed to open to addition and closed to modifications, thus allowing stability over time.  The systems contains tens of components that cover rainfall-runoff, evaporation, transpiration, infiltration, terrain analysis tools, interpolation models, calibrations tools, and so on. Every modelling paradigm is included, as, for instance process based modelling, lumped modelling, machine learning, or can be included. Spatially disjoint catchments can be modelled separately and joined together in a bigger model. GEOframe has been applied to hydrological simulations from the point scale to large catchments as the Blue Nile, and among those is being deployed to the Po river. GEOframe is open source and built with open source tools.

So where to start, when you want to know something about this system ? 

A good reading is for sure, the history of JGrass-NewAGE.  The second step is giving a look to the papers at in the three references here following their order.

JGrass-NewAGE was recently renamed GEOframe-NewAGE when the Jgrasstools were renamed Horton Machine because we were tired of people by the GRASS community to complain about the use of the GRASS name.

Finally browsing the rest of the posts, and the rest of references you find would complete the task.
For the documentation of software modules (which includes test file), please also refer to the GEOframe blog.

However, the most comprehensive treatment of the system is now the material on the Winter Schools. 

Codes can be found at the GEOframe repository.
NewAGE users can send inquiries at newageusers@googlegroups.com
NewAGE developers discussions happen at jgrass-newage-dev@googlegroups.com

References

1 - Formetta G., Antonello A., Franceschi S., David O., and Rigon R., Hydrological modelling with components: A GIS-based open-source framework, Environmental Modelling & Software, 5 (2014), 190-200

2 - Formetta, G.; Mantilla, R.; Franceschi, S., Antonello A., Rigon R., The JGrass- NewAge system for forecasting and managing the hydrological budgets at the basin scale: models of flow generation and propagation/routing, Geoscientific Model Development Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Pages: 943-955, DOI: 10.5194/gmd-4- 943-201, 2011 

3 - Bancheri, M., A flexible approach to the extimation of water budgets and its connection to the travel time theory, Ph.S. Dissertation, 2017


All the other publications can be found here.

GEOframe-NewAGE can be fully integrated with the GEOframe-SPACE (Soil, Plant, Atmosphere Continuum Estimator), the process-based (in the sense of Fatichi et al., 2016) set of tools in GEOframe

GEOframe essentials

 GEOframe is a system for doing hydrology by computer that aims to implement the DARTHs paradigm [Rigon et al., 2022]. By saying that it is a system, we emphasize that it is not a model but an infrastructure that can contain many differentiated modelling solutions (some tens of that) that are built upon model components [Argent et al., 2004]. This is because GEOframe leverages theObject Modelling system-framework (v3)[David et al., 2013] that allows to connect modelling components to solve a specific hydrological issue together and having many alternatives for its mathematical/numerical description. This infrastructure allows adapting the tools to the problems and not vice versa [Rigon et al., 2022]. In GEOframe particular attention has been dedicated to allow enhancements and additions writing the least code possible. The core code has been designed to open to addition and closed to modifications [Gamma et al, 1995], thus allowing stability of the code base over time.  GEOframe contains tens of components that cover rainfall-runoff [Formetta et al., 2011], snow modelling [Formetta et al., 2014] evaporation and transpiration[Bottazzi et al., 2021], infiltration [Tubini and Rigon, 2022], terrain analysis tools [Abera et al., 2014], interpolation models [Bancheri et al., 2018], calibrations tools [David et al., 2013], and so on. Every modelling paradigm is included, as, for instance process based modelling [Tubini and Rigon, 2022], lumped modelling [Formetta et al., 2014b], machine learning [Serafin et al., 2021], or can be included by adding appropriate components [Serafin, 2019]. Spatially disjoint catchments can be modelled separately and joined together in a bigger model by using a Groovy-based domain specific language. GEOframe has been applied to hydrological simulations from the point scale, to Alpine catchments [Abera et al., 2017], to large catchments as the Blue Nile [Abera et al., 2016], and among those is being deployed to the Po river. GEOframe is open source and built with open source tools including Eclipse, OpenJDK by Adoptium, Gradle, Github. Literate computing is pursued by extensively using Jupyter Notebooks for creating the input and the output of data. 

At Present GEOframe has three main branches: 

• GEOframe-NewAGE [Formetta et al., 2014] for the modelling of hydrology as a set of systems of systems of ordinary differential equations called Hydrological Dynamical Systems [CITE]; 
• WHETGEO (Tubini and Rigon, 2022) that solves the Richards, heat and transport equations in soil and groundwater; 
• GEOSPACE  which deals with soil-plant-atmosphere interactions. 

Many of the components, however, are shared among the various branches and "mixed" modelling solutions can be envisioned by choosing components from one or the other. In fact, for instance GEOSPACE is built upon WHETGEO and GEOframe ET components with the addition of a broker component that transmit and receive data from the to components subsets. For any of the sub-branches please refer to the respective blog pages.

References

Abera, W., A. Antonello, S. Franceschi, and G. Formetta. 2014. “The uDig Spatial Toolbox for Hydro-Geomorphic Analysis.” In Geomorphological Techniques (Online Edition), edited by British Society for Geomorphology. British Society for Geomorphology.

Abera, Wuletawu, Giuseppe Formetta, Luca Brocca, and Riccardo Rigon. 2017. “Modeling the Water Budget of the Upper Blue Nile Basin Using the JGrass-NewAge Model System and Satellite Data.” Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 21 (6): 3145–65.

Abera, Wuletawu, Giuseppe Formetta, Marco Borga, and Riccardo Rigon. 2017. “Estimating the Water Budget Components and Their Variability in a Pre-Alpine Basin with JGrass-NewAGE.” Advances in Water Resources 104 (June): 37–54.

Argent, Robert M. 2004. “An Overview of Model Integration for Environmental Applications —components, Frameworks and Semantics.” Environmental Modelling and Software 19 (3): 219– 34.

Bancheri, Marialaura, Francesco Serafin, Michele Bottazzi, Wuletawu Abera, Giuseppe Formetta, and Riccardo Rigon. 2018. “The Design, Deployment, and Testing of Kriging Models in GEOframe with SIK-0.9.8.” Geoscientific Model Development 11 (6): 2189–2207.

Bottazzi, Michele, Marialaura Bancheri, Mirka Mobilia, Giacomo Bertoldi, Antonia Longobardi, and Riccardo Rigon. 2021. “Comparing Evapotranspiration Estimates from the GEOframe-Prospero Model with Penman–Monteith and Priestley-Taylor Approaches under Different Climate Conditions.” WATER 13 (9): 1221.

David, O., J. C. Ascough II, W. Lloyd, T. R. Green, K. W. Rojas, G. H. Leavesley, and L. R. Ahuja. 2013. “A Software Engineering Perspective on Environmental Modeling Framework Design: The Object Modeling System.” Environmental Modelling & Software 39 (c): 201–13.

Formetta, G., R. Mantilla, S. Franceschi. 2011 and R. Rigon. “The JGrass-NewAge System for Forecasting and Managing the Hydrological Budgets at the Basin Scale: Models of Flow Generation and Propagation/routing.” Geoscientific Model. https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/4/943/2011/.

Formetta, G., S. K. Kampf, O. David, and R. Rigon. 2014. “Snow Water Equivalent Modeling Components in NewAge-JGrass.” Geoscientific Model Development 7 (3): 725–36.

Formetta, G., A. Antonello, S. Franceschi, O. David, and R. Rigon. 2014. “Hydrological Modelling with Components: A GIS-Based Open-Source Framework.” Environmental Modelling & Software 55 (May): 190–200.

Gamma, Erich, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, Ralph E.. Johnson, and John Vlissides. 1995. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. Pearson Deutschland GmbH.

Rigon, Riccardo, Giuseppe Formetta, Marialaura Bancheri, Niccolò Tubini, Concetta D’Amato, Olaf David, and Christian Massari. 2022. “HESS Opinions: Participatory Digital Earth Twin Hydrology Systems (DARTHs) for Everyone: A Blueprint for Hydrologists.” Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions, 1–38.

Serafin, Francesco. 2019. “Enabling Modeling Framework with Surrogate Modeling Capabilities and Complex Networks.” Edited by Riccardo Rigon And. Ph.D., University of Trento.

Serafin, Francesco, Olaf David, Jack R. Carlson, Timothy R. Green, and Riccardo Rigon. 2021. “Bridging Technology Transfer Boundaries: Integrated Cloud Services Deliver Results of Nonlinear Process Models as Surrogate Model Ensembles.” Environmental Modelling and Software[R] 146 (105231): 105231.

Tubini, Niccolò, and Riccardo Rigon. 2022. “Implementing the Water, HEat and Transport Model in GEOframe (WHETGEO-1D v.1.0): Algorithms, Informatics, Design Patterns, Open Science Features, and 1D Deployment.” Geoscientific Model Development 15 (1): 75–104.

GEOframe Soil Plants Atmosphere Continuum and hydrology Estimator (GEO-SPACE) essentials

GEO-SPACE (formerly known also as Lys-GEO in its its 1D implementation)  is intended to collect the growing set of GEOframe tools developed on the base of process-based philosophy. This can be found envisioned first in  Freeze and Harlan, 1969, and, fo instance well documented recently in Fatichi et al., 2016 and Paniconi and Putti, 2016. From a different point of view, it can be considered the upgrade of the GEOtop model, that still efficient and up-to-date, and more advanced than other similar models, was considered to be improvable from the algorithmic and informatics structure.  GEO-SPACE make leverage on the various common tools (components) shared with GEOframe-NewAGE and is made up  specifically of two main groups components, WHETGEO (mainly due, so far to the work of Niccolò Tubini) and the evaporation and transpiration, as follows from the work by Michele Bottazzi and Concetta D'Amato (ET-GEO). 

At present the development of GEO-SPACE (to become GEOtop 4.0) has still to achieve some goals, including the connection of plants treatment on WHETGEO 2D, the implementation of WHETGEO-3D, and so on. The current status of the project can be well described looking at the material presented at the Summer Schools on GEOframe that started in 2021 and will be held usually in week in middle June every year.  The most recent School addresses the more recent material. 

We remind here below, the general declaratory about GEOframe:

GEOframe is a system for doing hydrology by computer. By saying that it is a system, we emphasize that it is not a model but an infrastructure that can contain many differentiated modelling solutions (some tens of that) that are built upon models components. This is because GEOframe leverage on the Object Modelling system-framework (v3) that allows to connect modelling components to solve a specific hydrological issue together and having many alternative for its mathematical/numerical description. This infrastructure allows adapting the tools to the problems and not viceversa. In GEOframe particular attention has been dedicated to allow enhancements and additions writing the less code possible. The core code has been designed to open to addition and closed to modifications, thus allowing stability over time.  The systems contains tens of components that cover rainfall-runoff, evaporation, transpiration, infiltration, terrain analysis tools, interpolation models, calibrations tools, and so on. Every modelling paradigm is included, as, for instance process based modelling, lumped modelling, machine learning, or can be included. Spatially disjoint catchments can be modelled separately and joined together in a bigger model. GEOframe has been applied to hydrological simulations from the point scale to large catchments as the Blue Nile, and among those is being deployed to the Po river. GEOframe is open source and built with open source tools.

For detailed information of GEOSPACE, see D'Amato, 2024 Ph.D Thesis and our paper accepted on GMD below. 

References

D’Amato, Concetta, 2024 “Exploring the Soil-Plant-Atmosphere Continuum: Advancements, Integrated Modeling and Ecohydrological Insights.” Ph.D., Università di Trento.

D’Amato, Concetta, Niccolò Tubini, and Riccardo Rigon. 2025. “A Component Based Modular Treatment of the Soil-Plant-Atmosphere Continuum: The GEOSPACE Framework (v.1.2.9).” https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-4128.

Fatichi, Simone, Enrique R. Vivoni, Fred L. Ogden, Valeriy Y. Ivanov, Benjamin Mirus, David Gochis, Charles W. Downer, et al. 2016. “An Overview of Current Applications, Challenges, and Future Trends in Distributed Process-Based Models in Hydrology.” Journal of Hydrology 537 (C): 45–60.

Freeze, R. Allan, and R. L. Harlan. 1969. “Blueprint for a Physically-Based, Digitally-Simulated Hydrologic Response Model.” Journal of Hydrology 9 (3): 237–58.

Paniconi, Claudio, and Mario Putti. 2015. “Physically Based Modeling in Catchment Hydrology at 50: Survey and Outlook.” Water Resources Research 51 (9): 7090–7129.

Tubini, Niccolò, and Riccardo Rigon. “Implementing the Water, HEat and Transport Model in GEOframe (WHETGEO): Algorithms, Informatics, Design Patterns, Open Science Features and 1D Deployment.” Geoscientific Models Development Discussions.

Winter School on the GEOframe system

The course for doctoral students, post docs and young researchers in Hydrology, Forestry, and related disciplines will cover the simulation of the hydrological cycle of catchments of various sizes with the GEOframe system. To know about GEOframe and GEOframe-NewAGE, please refer to here.

They say that all models are wrong but useful. However, with better tools you forecast and decide better.

The course will enroll at most thirty students and will be held at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering of Trento from January 8 to January 18 included.
The course will be of totally 68 hours (8 a day) of which 34 (4 each day) will be dedicated to laboratory and personal work under the supervision of tutors. The course includes as option to get an exam certification, upon the completion of an exercise, to have doctoral credits.

Subscription at: https://webmagazine.unitn.it/en/evento/dicam/44808/geoframe-newage-winter-school

Instructors

• Riccardo Rigon
• Michele Bottazzi
• Niccolò Tubini

with material prepared by

• Giovanna Dalpiaz
• Marialaura Bancheri

The  topics treated has been:

• Tuesday, January 8: Introduction to the course - What is OMS - What is GEOframe - Using Python and Jupyter for visualising Inputs and Outputs 
• Wednesday, January 9- Catchments and Hydrologic Response Units delineation 
• Thursday and Friday, January, 10 - 11 - Treatment of spatial data and Calibration  
• Monday January 14 - Estimation of radiation components 
• Tuesday, January 15 - Evaporation and Transpiration 
• Wednesday, January 16 - Rainfall-Runoff modelling with various NewAGE components 
• Thursday, January 17 - Rainfall-Runoff modelling with various NewAGE components 
• Friday, January 18 - Opinions on hydrological modelling. Exercises on assignments.
• Epilogue and thanks

Go to the first day

Why choosing GEOframe over other models/platforms ? I would say for:

• Flexibility: GEOframe is not a model but a system of components that interact at run-time. You can chose among various components options for any of the processes.
• Expandability: If you like to program, with a little investment in Java you can write your own component and make them to interact with the others without having to reinvent the wheel.
• Parallelism. Components work in parallel when their tasks do not interact, but this is transparent for you (we call it implicit parallelism). 
• Spatial discretisation. A catchment is subdivided in parts (HRU) which can be modeled separately and are computed in parallel. The network structure is used to achieve the spatial parallelism. Its spatial modularity can be used to add/cut part of the basins without having to redo the spatial analysis, for doing multisite calibration, to progress the analysis of a larger basin in parts that are assembled together eventually.
• Beyond-state-of art components.  Besides traditional approach to processes, we implemented a few new ideas for all the processes we covered.
• Reliability.  GEOframe is currently used for the flood forecasting in real time by Regione Basilicata. It is not just a system for research that does not work in real cases. 
• Tracers studies. Not treated in the school are present tools for doing tracers studies,
• Process based modelling.  Not treated in the school, we have tools for integrating Richards equation in 1D, and we are developing tools for integrating it in 2d and 3d coupling it with the energy budget. These components will be able to interact with the other. We also started new developments on freezing soil and snow modelling.

The cost of the course for early subscribers is 270 Euros which includes lunch and parsimonious coffee-breaks  Member of SII, The Italian hydrological Society have a discount of 20 Euros. Cost of late subscribers (after November 15, 2018) is 370 Euros. 

After November 15 some work will be required to participant in order to setup their tools for running GEOframe. Installation of Java (version 8), installation of the Object Modelling System console, Installation of Python and Python notebooks, testing the use of some file formats. After the accomplishment of the requirements, students will be allow to bring their own study cases at the School.

Who wants to have early information or clarifications can write to me: riccardo.rigon at unit.it. Subscription page at:

https://webmagazine.unitn.it/en/evento/dicam/44808/geoframe-newage-winter-school