Exploring the behavior of the spring ecosystem model using an object-oriented database system

Landscape and ecosystem models have typically been viewed as “black boxes”, that given a set of inputs yield a set of outputs. This view does not easily lend itself to investigations as to why a model behaves as it does, especially when multiple models are coupled together to create a larger model. We hypothesize that, for this type of investigation, a visual multimedia tool is necessary to gain insight into the temporal behavior of the model. In order to facilitate the exploration of the behavior of one particular well-known landscape model, we have coupled the model with an object oriented database system and a data plotting and visualization package. Using this system, we have created animations of the model´s output and used them to discover interesting properties of the model. In our demonstration, we display these animations and discuss how such a system can be used as an aid to explore hypotheses about the model´s behavior