Cooperative Ecoystem Studies Unit, Gulf Coast CESU

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The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), National Wetlands Research Center (NWRC), Lafayette, LA is offering a funding opportunity to upgrade existing USGS simulation models for hurricane, sea-level, and ecosystem application. These model upgrades will support a forest damage assessment study of Hurricane Sandy wind and storm surge impact on coastal forested ecosystems of the Atlantic Coast. The model upgrades will be applied to quantify wind, climate, and storm tide behavior of Hurricane Sandy and previous hurricanes, runoff, climate and sea-level change over the past century or more. Executable programs and datasets will be delivered and updated to provide the necessary functional aspects of multiple models developed by USGS scientists for modeling hurricane impact and ecosystem response of coastal wetlands. The models and datasets are outdated, having been originally developed and applied years and decades ago and now require upgrades to supplement project goals and objectives for comparing Hurricane Sandy effects with previous storms and climate history. This project requires mutual cooperation of advanced computing, geographic information systems (GIS), programming advancements, visualization tools, and database design as well as technical and subject matter expertise of both USGS and University staff. Frequent interaction and close collaboration between cooperating institutions will be required to exchange model code and to review computer program performance to enhance proper integration and project efficiency based on programming skills and institutional strengths.

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