Macrosystems EDDIE Module 2: Cross-Scale Interactions

Environmental phenomena are often driven by multiple factors that
interact across space and over time. In freshwater lakes and
reservoirs worldwide, phytoplankton blooms are increasing in frequency
and severity due to interactions between local, regional, and
continental drivers, including land use (local) and climate change
(regional) drivers. Because it is difficult to predict how
phytoplankton blooms will respond to the different aspects of land use
and climate change simultaneously, many researchers are using lake
simulation models, which provide a powerful tool for exploring the
sensitivity of ecosystems to multiple factors. In this module, students will learn how to set up a lake simulation
model and "force" the model with climate and land use
scenarios to test hypotheses about how local and regional drivers
interact to promote or suppress phytoplankton blooms in different
lakes. The overarching goal of this module is for students to explore new
modeling and computing tools while learning fundamental concepts about
how non-linear macrosystem-level phenomena (e.g., lake phytoplankton
blooms) can occur through cross-scale interactions. The A-B-C
structure of this module makes it flexible and adaptable to a range of
student levels and course structures. This dataset contains instructional materials and the files necessary
to run the complete module. Readers are referred to the GLM science
manual (Hipsey et al. 2014) for further details on model
configuration.