Projects:

Scope of Projects

ELM 1km regional app

ELM 500m regional app

ELM-subregional apps

ELM 500m regional application

The regional applications encompass about 10,400 km² region of the greater Everglades system. There are currently two regional applications: one utilizes a 500 m resolution grid, and the other is at a 1 km resolution.

Here we provide a brief overview of 500-m (ELM v2.8) application that we recently developed, but which we have not yet publicly-released for formal project planning applications. Funding for this research and development is from the USGS Priority Ecosystem Science Program, Joint Ecosystem Modeling.

Performance assessment

For this version of the regional application, the fine-scale (500 m resolution) hydrology is of primary initial interest, in order to provide another option to 'drive' other ecological models such as those of the Across Trophic Level System Simulation (ATLSS) at the scale required by those models.

Moreover, we are exploring different options to intergrate this application's hydro-ecological outputs with the Everglades Depth Estimation Network (EDEN).

Using data shared by the EDEN and TIME (Tides and Inflows in the Mangroves of the Everglades) model projects, we generated a new map of land surface elevation throughout the ELM domain for use in the new ELM v2.8, 500-m resolution application. Further research and model refinement is ongoing, with the figure below indicating the initial results of assessing the hydrologic performance of the model (which is generally equal to or better than the performance of the ELM v2.5 application at 1-km resolution).

Extensive data are available for calibrating-validating water stage elevations; during a 2-decade period, the first (December 2007) prototype of the model had a 2 cm median bias in predictions of that Performance Measure within the marshes (above figure).

Animated visualizations

While rigorous comparisons of simulated to observed data at points along gradients are important in demonstrating model performance, 2D and 3D animations provide a rich amount of information on the model capabilities.


Quicktime movie (MPEG 6.8 mb) ELMreg500 v2.8 simulated (positive/negative) water depth relative to land elevation, under historical climate and water management 'drivers'. Each frame is a 30-d mean value of the positive or negative depth of the water table relative to local land elevation, spanning the 243 intervals of 1981-2000.