Eclpss: a Java-based framework for parallel ecosystem simulation and modeling

Eclpss (Ecological Component Library for Parallel Spatial Simulation) is a Java™-based framework designed to give ecologists the ability to easily develop grid-based ecosystem simulations at multiple spatial and temporal scales. The framework automatically targets the model to shared memory parallel machines. Because of the judicious use of Java, both the framework and framework-generated models are platform independent. Users may write arbitrarily complex models without the need to be expert programmers. These models are reusable, easily modifiable and extensible. Collaborative model development, sharing, and dissemination with automatically-generated documentation are all web-accessible. The modelling environment consists of a suite of GUI-based tools which are designed to be intuitive to ecologists. Ecologists specify the model; the Eclpss compiler uses these specifications to generate code. Scientific unit measurements are incorporated into specifications and consistency checking is performed; substance consistency is supported. This paper presents the structure and features of the Eclpss framework, the migration of a Matlab model into this framework, and concludes with a discussion of ongoing and planned future work.