Tutorials

Tutorials are a way to get started with using the model platform.

The first give you basic structure of the interface and the menu system.

Other tutorials are looking to a more specific focus and will be useful also to learn

about how to understand about basic subjects that are part of the CoupModel platform.

The Evapotranspiration tutorial is useful to understand the various components of evaporation and how they are influenced by a typical vegetation cover. You will will hopefull understand the differences between interception evaporation, transpiration and soil evaporation after looking into this tutorial.

The Energy balance tutorial goes much deeper into the understanding about the soil evaporation. After completing this tutorial you will understand details about the energy balance of a soil surface and you will also understand how the simulated outputs can be compared with measurements.  You can make single runs to explore the sensitivivity of some few options or you can make calibrations using formal or informal statistical methods to improve you model representations,

The infiltration tutortial will be important for understanding soil physcial properties and especially the infiltration of water into a soil profile. After completing this tutorial you will understand how the water retention curve and the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity function will have different type of impacts on water flows in a soil profile. You can estimate the properties based on the soil texture only or on measured points of pressure heads and water contents. The tutorial will also show how you can use an database to assign suitable values of soil physical characteristics.

The Runoff tutorial will be very useful if you want to understand how you can evaluate the water balance of a watershed using long term data on runoff together with climate data to evaluate changes in evaporation as the results of land use or climate changes. The tutorial is using date from PlynLimon watershed in UK and demonstratets how results from two different model structures (a simple aggregated soil and a soil profile) can be compared with measurements from two differents watersheds that are exposed to the same climate during a 30 year long period.

The Upscaling tutorial will be useful if you want to apply the model for large number of sites having different climate variability patterns. The tutorial is using climate data from 33 european sites.

The Vietnam Mekong tutorial will be very useful to understand how to calibrate the model to describe the hydrology of agriculture soil in the Mekong delta. The tutorial will also present detailed information about the soil moisture dynamics as measured for two sites.

Groundwater levels have been monitored during long periods in Sweden (see details from SGU) and today we can evaluate those records for understanding how the climate creates both short term seasonal dynamics as well as long term climate and land use related trends of the groundwater. Data from an educational project as provided by SGU and combinded with two types of climate data can be downloaded from here .  It is also possible to view  and learn details about all the steps in a modelling project based on the data available.

An introduction to demonstrate the simulations of greenhousegas emissions from 5 different ecosystem in Sweden on mineral and organic soil during a 60 year period was prepared as part of a PhD course at Gothenburg University January 2019. A a powerpoint presentation is available as well as the simulation templates for the 5 systems.