Presentation Information
[O10-P01]Development of SEIB-Explorer: A Visualization Environment for Understanding Dynamic Vegetation Models
*Hisashi Sato1 (1.Research Institute for Global Change, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology)
Keywords:
Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (DGVM),Scientific Visualization,Cognitive Load Reduction,Long-term Forest Dynamics
Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs) play an important role in assessing vegetation responses to climate change. However, within these models, plant population dynamics and carbon and water cycles are computed through complex interacting processes, making their behavior difficult to grasp even for model developers. DGVMs produce vast amounts of numerical output, and examining only aggregate indicators such as ecosystem-scale carbon or water budgets is often insufficient to understand what is occurring inside the model. Motivated by this practical challenge, we developed a visualization software package, SEIB-Explorer, with the aim of enabling more intuitive understanding of numerical results and model structures through carefully designed visualization techniques.
SEIB-Explorer is a standalone environment that integrates model execution, three-dimensional visualization, and basic analysis tools for the individual-based vegetation model SEIB-DGVM. Forests at a single site are represented as virtual stands, allowing users to track differences among plant functional types as well as individual-level growth and competition processes in both space and time. Interactive time sliders and information panels that organize numerical variables enable users to move back and forth between numerical data and spatial structure, substantially reducing the cognitive load required to interpret model behavior.
As a result, SEIB-Explorer functions not only as a tool for model developers and researchers but also as an environment in which users without specialized backgrounds can intuitively explore and enjoy vegetation dynamics. In educational and outreach settings, visually presenting forest structure and its temporal evolution has been shown to enhance understanding of, and engagement with, numerical vegetation models.
In addition, the platform enables continuous observation of forest dynamics over timescales of several centuries. By visually compressing long-term processes that are difficult to experience directly within human temporal perception, SEIB-Explorer extends understanding beyond conventional numerical analysis and offers a new perspective on long-term ecological dynamics.
In this presentation, we discuss the development background and application examples of SEIB-Explorer, demonstrating how visualization driven by scientific necessity can ultimately serve as a medium through which people view plant ecosystems from different temporal scales and perspectives. While grounded in scientific visualization, such a practice may also be interpreted as a form of art in that it updates and expands the ways in which we perceive and understand the world.
SEIB-Explorer is a standalone environment that integrates model execution, three-dimensional visualization, and basic analysis tools for the individual-based vegetation model SEIB-DGVM. Forests at a single site are represented as virtual stands, allowing users to track differences among plant functional types as well as individual-level growth and competition processes in both space and time. Interactive time sliders and information panels that organize numerical variables enable users to move back and forth between numerical data and spatial structure, substantially reducing the cognitive load required to interpret model behavior.
As a result, SEIB-Explorer functions not only as a tool for model developers and researchers but also as an environment in which users without specialized backgrounds can intuitively explore and enjoy vegetation dynamics. In educational and outreach settings, visually presenting forest structure and its temporal evolution has been shown to enhance understanding of, and engagement with, numerical vegetation models.
In addition, the platform enables continuous observation of forest dynamics over timescales of several centuries. By visually compressing long-term processes that are difficult to experience directly within human temporal perception, SEIB-Explorer extends understanding beyond conventional numerical analysis and offers a new perspective on long-term ecological dynamics.
In this presentation, we discuss the development background and application examples of SEIB-Explorer, demonstrating how visualization driven by scientific necessity can ultimately serve as a medium through which people view plant ecosystems from different temporal scales and perspectives. While grounded in scientific visualization, such a practice may also be interpreted as a form of art in that it updates and expands the ways in which we perceive and understand the world.