260-8 JAVA Newhall Simulation Model (jNSM) - Update to a Traditional Soil Climate Simulation Model.



Tuesday, October 18, 2011: 10:25 AM
Henry Gonzalez Convention Center, Room 206B, Concourse Level

Sharon W. Waltman, National Soil Survey Center - Geospatial Research Unit, USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service, Morgantown, WV, Douglas Miller, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, Brian Bills, Soil-Tec Analytical, University Park, PA and William J. Waltman, Cooperative Extension, Pennsylvania State University, Coudersport, PA
In response to a USDA-NRCS need to better understand soil climate in soil survey, the JAVA Newhall Simulation Model or jNSM was developed in 2011.  jNSM is an update to a traditional soil climate simulation model called Newhall Simulation Model (NSM) by Franklin Newhall.  Newhall's model for soil moisture temperature regime determination (Newhall and Berdanier, 1992) was originally written in COBAL then re-implemented in GW-BASIC by Van Wambeke (Van Wambeke et al., 1992; Van Wambeke, 2000). The GW-BASIC version of the Newhall Simulation Model, known as Van Wambeke 1.0, was ported to the Java programming language for the current jNSM application. This Java implementation comprises the main computational engine of the jNSM application.  jNSM, is a desktop client application that employs Java 5 (Oracle Corporation) and Adobe Flex. The Flex and the Java are integrated into an Adobe AIR executable application. Flex is used to manage the model input and the formatting of the output products of the application. The jNSM application takes batch run input in the form of a CSV file (easily created from standard spreadsheets), and also allows interactive input of data comprising a single model run. Output products are displayed on the user’s monitor, and can be saved and printed in PDF format. Output reports include soil moisture and temperature regime classification, biological window calendars and precipitation/potential evapo-transpiration climographs, plus a summary of model inputs and user information.  Each jNSM model run's input and output are paired together and stored in XML format.  jNSM requires serially complete monthly average values for precipitation and air temperature for at least one year. Soil available water capacity and the mean annual air temperature to mean annual soil temperature relationship can be adjusted to reflect local or regional conditions. 
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