Portal Announcements
Announcements
Job opportunities |
|---|
 |
News | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 What is happening within the CSDMS community? | ||||||
CSDMS in the news → Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship applications for 2013 Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship, apply by January 8, 2013 Here is an exciting opportunity for doctoral students to earn up to four years of financial support while pursuing degrees in fields of study that utilize high-performance computing to solve complex problems in science and engineering. This unique experience allows students to collaborate with the Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories and one another - all the while establishing themselves as members of the larger scientific community that will play an important role in their professional careers. Jointly funded by the DOE's Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (DOE CSGF) program was established in 1991 as part of an effort to address the shortage of computational scientists in the United States. More than 20 years later, this program has successfully trained the next generation of leaders in computational science and engineering, supporting more than 340 students at over 60 universities since its inception. Applications for the next class of fellows are due on or by January 8, 2013, and your help in promoting the opportunity at your institution would be much appreciated. I urge you to identify your best and brightest senior undergraduate and first-year doctoral students and personally encourage them to apply. For more information regarding the fellowship - and to access the online application – visit http://www.krellinst.org/csgf
→ NCED and CSDMS announce the Summer Institute on Deltas and Coasts, March 2012 NCED and CSDMS announce the new Summer Institute on Earth-Surface Dynamics 2012, designed to engage young scientists in a focused topic in Earth-surface dynamics. NCED shares expertise on laboratory experiments and fieldwork and CSDMS brings numerical modeling experiments. This two-week institute invites students and young faculty to participate in integrated modeling.
→ At least 99 CSDMS Science presentations at AGU, December 2011 The American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting in December in San Francisco always attracts many of the CSDMS members, his year it is scheduled for December 5th-9th. We compiled a list for you to make it easy to find your colleagues' presentations. There is a about 99 talks or posters to check out if you want to get an impression of the breadth and width of the CSDMS community science! Find the list of CSDMS member presentations If your presentation is not listed, feel free to email Albert Kettner (kettner@colorado.edu) and he will update the file. → Successful Summer Institute on Deltas and Coasts, August 2011 NCED and CSDMS taught the Summer Institute on Earth-Surface Dynamics for 30 graduate students and young faculty. The 2011 topic was 'Coastal processes and delta evolution' and students learned from worldwide experts on the state-of-the-art understanding of these processes. The course took place at the St. Anthony Falls laboratory. Students were able to design an physical tank experiment, simulating a delta prograding into a basin with several sea level cycles. Another highlight was hands-on computer modeling to learn about validation of hydrological models, to learn about the effects of damming on coasts and how to all run these simulations on a remote supercomputer. It all came together on a last day of student presentations and last numerical model simulations. See here:Impressions of the Summer Institute 2011 → NCED and CSDMS announce the Summer Institute on Deltas and Coasts, March 2011 NCED and CSDMS announce the Summer Institute on Earth-Surface Dynamics, designed to engage young scientists in a focused topic in Earth-surface dynamics. NCED shares expertise on laboratory experiments and fieldwork and CSDMS brings numerical modeling experiments. This two-week institute invites students and young faculty to participate in integrated modeling.
→ Mohamad Nasr-Azadani receives the CSDMS Modeling Award 2010, February 2011 Congratulations! It is our great pleasure to award the CSDMS Student Modeler 2010 to Mohamad Nasr-Azadani, University of California at Santa Barbara, for his submission of, ‘TURBINS: An immersed boundary, Navier-Stokes code for the simulation of gravity and turbidity currents interacting with complex topographies.’ → NSF data management plan requirements, January 2011 "Proposals submitted or due on or after January 18, 2011, must include a supplementary document of no more than two pages labeled “Data Management Plan”. This supplementary document should describe how the proposal will conform to NSF policy on the dissemination and sharing of research results. We have identified two key points from NSF-EAR data and model sharing policy specifically, that PI’s can (partly) address by using CSDMS services. See how CSDMS can help out. → CSDMS Director James Syvitski elected AGU Fellow, December 2010 CSDMS Director James Syvitski has been elected AGU Fellow and will be honored at the Annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting on December 16th, 2010. AGU Fellows are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the advancement of the geophysical sciences. The American Geophysical Union reserves this honor for less than 0.1% of their members every year. Professor Syvitski’s has brought new science insights to the disciplines of oceanography, rivers and fjord processes, and the understanding of sediment transport. He approached these domains by building new quantitative connections and models; from glacier to fjord, and especially river fluxes into the world oceans. He used an experimentalist approach with development of numerical models and this lead to the first models that estimated the effects of climate change on river fluxes, to new insights in shelf drainage network reorganization and to recent new ideas of the effects of humans on sinking deltas. He brings the community together to model earth surface processes and bridges traditional science domains in the process AGU describes their scientists as “people who explore the surface, interior, oceans and atmosphere of Earth”. James fits the profile: he has jumped on tidewater glacier snouts, blasted deltas to investigate turbidity currents, collected invaluable oceanographic casts while his vessel was leaking because it crashed into an iceberg, chased away polar bears from interesting fjord sediments, and has seen the ocean floor up close in a deepwater submersible. Currently, he broadened his perspective and explores the Earth from satellite imagery. But even at the peak of his field activities, he started using numerical models to further investigate his new questions. Syvitski’s present research interest in moving the world of Earth Surface Dynamics Modeling forward by providing computational resources models as a means to explore and make predictions is a natural progression from the creative codes for river and delta processes built much earlier. → MARGINS-NSF newsletter, No. 22 (Spring 2009) CSDMS and What it Means in the MARGINS context → OpenMI newsletter (Feb. 13th, 2009) CSDMS to use OpenMI to build a surface dynamics community → NCED newsletter (Feb. 2009) Ongoing Work with CSDMS → Colorado News Center (Feb. 4th 2009) New CU-Boulder Computer Cluster to Aid in Earth-Modeling Research Updates from the director → September 2016 Dear CSDMS Members,
2) Arrivals and Departures:
3) 2016 CSDMS Annual Meeting:
4) Awards:
5) Tracking Papers & the h-index for models:
6) Human Dimensions FRG Workshop:
7) CSDMS 3.0 Breakout Discussions Notes:
8) WMT components:
9) Python lessons:
Wishing you the best for the coming fall and winter seasons, → September 2015 Dear CSDMS Members, 1.) New Report: The CSDMS2.0 2015 Annual Report can be found at CSDMS_docs.
2.) The EKT repository now highlights the CSDMS contributions to NOAA’s ‘Science on a Sphere’ data repository. The developed datasets and quick links to the NOAA data catalogue and teaching materials are provided. 3) The successful 2015 CSDMS Annual Meeting, “Models meet Data, Data meet Models,” took place May 26-28, 2015 in Boulder Colorado. Fifteen state-of-the-art keynote presentations, ten outstanding clinics, and 50 poster presentations along with community discussions on data and models were provided. All presentations, posters and clinic abstracts are provided in Appendix 2 & 3 within our Annual Report. All plenary keynote presentations and most clinics were recorded and are provided through the CSDMS YouTube channel, which is also embedded in the CSDMS web portal. 4) The 2015 CSDMS Lifetime Achievement Award in Earth Surface Dynamics Modeling was presented to Professor Chris Paola (University of Minnesota) in Boulder, Colorado, as part of the 2015 CSDMS Annual Meeting. Presenters included Dr. Man Liang, Professor Brad Murray, Professor Charles Vorosmarty, and Professor James Syvitski. The CSDMS Program Director’s Award was given to Professor Bilal Haq. The 2014 Student Modeler Award went to Dr. Jean-Arthur Olive for his submission, “Modes of extensional faulting controlled by surface processes,” which investigates the feedbacks between surface processes and tectonics in an extensional setting by coupling a 2-D geodynamical model with a landscape evolution law. The Best Poster Award for the CSDMS Annual Meeting 2015 went to Katherine Ratliff for her submission, “River-ocean interactions: Building a new morphodynamic delta model.” Professor Patricia Wiberg, CSDMS Steering Committee Chair, presented Ratliff with a Kindle. Further details are available in Appendix 4 of our Annual Report. 5) The CSDMS Integration Facility officially released WMT1.0, the CSDMS Web Modeling Tool. WMT is a web application that provides an Ajax client-side graphical interface and a RESTful server-side database and API that allows users, from a web browser on a desktop, laptop or tablet computer, to build and run coupled surface dynamics models on a supercomputer. With WMT, users can 1) Design a model from a set of components, 2) Edit component parameters, 3) Save models to a web-accessible server, 4) Share saved models with the community, 5) Submit runs to an HPC system, and 6) Download simulation results. For further details and release information, interested parties can go to WMT_1.0_release. 6) Please join us in welcoming Professor Wei Luo (Northern Illinois U) as the new Chair of the Education and Knowledge Transfer Working Group, Professor Tom Hsu (U Delaware) as the new Chair of the Cyberinformatics and Numeric Working Group, and Professor Venkat Lakshmi (U South Carolina) as the new Chair of the Hydrology Focus Research Group. 7) CSDMS is on Twitter and regularly tweets on new papers from our community, media coverage of earth surface processes, and job and funding opportunities. You can also keep up with quick announcements on new developments within the CSDMS Integration Facility and the Working Groups. Follow CSDMS: ttps://goo.gl/W0iOz0. 8) The CSDMS Integration Facility has started to track the h-index for models. This is similar to what Google scholar does for a person, e.g. Albert Einstein (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qc6CJjYAAAAJ&hl=en). So start entering your model publication references and the CSDMS website will update the h-index overnight. Read more about this at Citations. With best wishes for the coming fall season, James P.M. Syvitski → August 2014 Dear CSDMS members,
→ January 2014 Dear CSDMS Members,
With best wishes for the coming spring season, James P.M. Syvitski → August 2013 Dear CSDMS members, 
With best wishes for the coming fall season → August 2012 Dear CSDMS members,
With best wishes for the coming fall season → February 2012 Dear CSDMS members, CSDMS continues to gain momentum. In 2011 membership grew by 46% (220 new members — 710 members in total from 142 U.S. institutions and 183 non-US institutions from 51 countries). There was a 22% growth in models and components (191 open-source models), a 41% growth in model code (now 4.85 million lines of code), a 66% growth in CSDMS HPCC users, and a 267% growth in visits to the CSDMS web resources. These 5.45 million visits suggest that CSDMS is now the “go to” site for models and related data and educational products including animations, modeling labs and lecture materials. The CSDMS YouTube channel now offers 122 movies & animations, generating more than 36,001 views and placing the CSDMS YouTube channel from time to time in the “Top 50 most viewed channels” in the “non profit” category. CSDMS penetration of computational tools into the earth-science community should provide valuable future dividends. Please download the recent 2011 Annual Report and read up on the details. Work is afoot to try to get a CSDMS-related program up and running in Europe, with plans to coordinate these activities with the European Commission funding activities. See Peter Burgess for developing details: p.burgess@es.rhul.ac.uk Plans are in the works to develop a taskforce of the CSDMS Interagency Committee to explore early adoption strategies of CSDMS models and products. Most agencies use models to address practical applied problems: operational forecasts; regulatory assessments, permitting, risk assessments, remedial action plans, emergency response, and outreach to stakeholders. Agencies often rely on models developed or are funded in-house, for reasons of quality control, specificity, familiarity (with developers, users, and contractors). CSDMS can contribute to agency understanding on how to build and deploy coupled models and individual agencies might be “early adopters” and leverage CSDMS to develop coupled models to address specific topics. As a proof of concept, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is funding Rutgers, VIMS, and UC-Santa Barbara to work with CSDMS to develop a coupled modeling system to provide insights into areas most likely to be impacted by turbidity currents, and the factors that precondition or trigger the flow. The Gulf of Mexico has more than 28,000 miles of underwater pipes exposed to different types of structural damage — 5% of the pipelines are broken or damaged by sudden and violent cascading of sediments. The 2011 Annual CSDMS Award winners are:
A key CSDMS achievement of the past year is the development of an innovative, two-level wrapping process (BMI/CMI) that greatly simplifies the process of converting contributed models into interoperable, plug-and-play components. Model contributors are asked to make relatively small changes and additions (e.g. functions that describe their model's attributes in a standard way) to their source code to provide a Basic Model Interface or BMI. BMI implementation is noninvasive and straightforward --- it requires no calls to CSDMS code and no knowledge of CSDMS framework concepts or protocols. By design, BMI provides all of the model information (grid type, information on input and output variables, etc.) that is needed by a second-level wrapper that converts the model to a CSDMS component. The second-level wrapper provides a Component Model Interface or CMI that enables coupling to other CSDMS components and automatically calls service components when needed to accommodate numerous differences between models such as programming language, computational grid, time-stepping scheme, variable names and units. Service components provide additional added value such as output to NetCDF files, unit conversion and spatial regridding. By design, BMI allows the same CMI wrapper to be used for every model written in a given language. This greatly simplifies and reduces maintenance associated with the wrapping process and reduces the burden on code contributors. The CSDMS special issue on Environmental Modeling is almost complete and most papers are now available as ‘in press’ and are ‘on line’ for download at Computers & Geosciences. The second all hands meeting: “Impact of time and process scales” was attended by 101 CSDMS members. The meeting offered 1) 20-keynote lectures on insights on time and space issues and how this is addressed in the software subtleties that is at the heart of all surface dynamic modeling efforts, 2) 12-clinics on a variety of models, on model coupling and visualization, and parallel programming, and 3) well-attended poster sessions most of which can be found on the CSDMS web: https://csdms.colorado.edu/wiki/CSDMS_meeting_2011 along with keynote videos of presentations. Six new community initiatives will be pursued in the coming years:
CSDMS is a contributing member of the NSF Frontiers of Earth System Dynamics Delta Dynamics Collaboratory (DDC) that will develop and test high-resolution, quantitative models incorporating morphodynamics, ecology, and stratigraphy to predict river delta dynamics over engineering to geologic time-scales, and to address questions of system dynamics, resiliency, and sustainability. This DDC opportunity will see a suite of 1D (reduced complexity) to 3D (ecogeomorphodynamic flow and sediment transport) models be developed using existing CMT components and components developed in the course of that research. CSDMS will also contribute to developing a NASA "fingerprinting" system able to identify hot spots of key delta systems as they respond to environmental stressors, under contemporary societal vulnerabilities and future threats. CSDMS is also a strong supporter with other international communities in calling for an International Year of Deltas. On behalf of all the staff of the Integration Facility (IF) we wish all of our CSDMS contributors the best for upcoming spring season. Again thanks for your efforts! James P.M. Syvitski → August 2011 Dear CSDMS members, 1) Just 3 Weeks Left for registering your attendance for the Annual CSDMS 2011 Meeting Impact of Time and Process Scale in Boulder CO (Oct. 28-30): CSDMS 2011 meeting
2) We have released our latest 2011 Semiannual Report
3) The CSDMS High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC) Beach continues to grow in capability (cores, memory) and CSDMS-users supported. Hardware troubles in mid-spring have been resolved. https://csdms.colorado.edu/wiki/HPCC_portal
James P.M. Syvitski CSDMS Executive Director, August 10, 2011 → January 2011 Dear CSDMS members,  On behalf of the CSDMS integration staff we wish you all the very best for the New Year. CSDMS continues to gain momentum, with 140 new members in 2010 (>480 members in total). CSDMS has become the international coordinator of open source surface dynamics models and modeling efforts, with more than 120 U.S. institutions and more than 100 foreign institutions from 30 countries. The CSDMS Model Repository offers >160 open-source models registering more than 8000 downloads. This penetration of models directly addresses the historical lack of readily available models for research and application. During the last year CSDMS saw continued growth and advances in community products, including
The CSDMS Web Portal with more than 1.5 million visits is becoming a “go to” site for models and CSDMS-related data and educational products including animations and images, modeling labs and lecture materials. The new site remains in use but is still under construction. If you need to find something (like our latest annual report) you might need to use the search engine, until the site is completed. The Annual Report is a must read for all members. The report provides the 5 year strategic plans developed at our Annual Meeting and also the work plans for the Integration Facility over the coming year and detailed description of accomplishments over the last year. Our 110 users of the CSDMS HPCC Beach will be pleased to hear that the system has grown with another 128 compute cores due to the generosity of the U.S.G.S. and the Univ of Colorado. Beach now offers members 704 cores @ 3.0 GHz E5472 (≈8 Tflops). If anyone desires even more computational horsepower, they should contact me and I will try to find time on the large CU supercomputer Janus (>150Tflops). Remember it is free J. Proposals submitted to NSF on or after January 18, 2011, must include a supplementary document of no more than two pages labeled “Data Management Plan”. Designed to deal with both models and data, CSDMS is supporting this NSF requirement by offering an acceptable vehicle through its community portal. See:NSF_data_management_plan. The 2010 annual report also publishes the abstracts from our Annual Meeting, for those who could not attend. The report includes the Dave Furbish dedication to Professor Gary Parker who was recipient of the first CSDMS Lifetime Achievement Award. Gary was awarded the honor along with a gentle roasting at the San Antonio meeting. As Professor Furbish writes: “Gary has fundamentally contributed to steering the course of scientific thinking. The breadth of his impact is impressive.” The 2010 Student Award has yet to be announced given the larger than expected and great nominations. Watch for that announcement in the coming month. On behalf of all the staff of the Integration Facility (IF) we thank our hard working CSDMS members and look forward to working with them in the New Year! → July 2010  Dear CSDMS members, Just 2 Weeks Left: for registering for the all hands CSDMS 2010 Meeting ‘Modeling for Environmental Change’ in San Antonio TX (Oct. 14-17). The meeting will offer an all-star cast of keynote speakers, teaching clinics, strategizing session, and banquet. A CSDMS Special Issue of ‘Computers and Geosciences’ will publish the findings and papers of the participants. Follow this link for more information and to register. We have released our latest semiannual report. The report introduces a new Just the Facts concept for updates on:
The 2010 semiannual report provides updates on each of the Year 4 Goals. These updates are a ‘must read’ for those using the newly released CSDMS Modeling Tool (CMT). The report contains the survey results of 36 AAU universities, to assess how surface process modeling is currently being taught. This Sample Inventory of Modeling Courses documents the courses highly relevant to CSDMS modeling and educational efforts, and the schools with the richest course offerings. The report also provides a CSDMS Modeling Course “Use Case”, for those interested in adopting CSDMS modules for upcoming course. On behalf of all the staff of the Integration Facility (IF) we wish all of our hard working CSDMS members an interesting or relaxing summer. Again thanks for your efforts! James P.M. Syvitski → January 2010  Dear CSDMS members, On behalf of all the staff of the Integration Facility (IF) we wish all of our hard working members the very best for the New Year. Below I provide brief snippets of updates. For those wanting more details on all of these topics please see the CSDMS 2009 Annual report.
350 members, 76 US Academic Institutions, 63 Foreign Institutes from 17 countries, 17 US Federal labs and agencies, 11 companies
Now streamlined and being adopted by the journal Computers & Geosciences (International Association of Mathematical Geosciences), to better penetrate the research community.
Fully functional, presently supporting 7 major projects using multiple processors, and provides the backbone for the CSDMS Modeling Framework for model coupling.
Fully functional GUI allowing users to graphically build applications from CSDMS components on their own platforms (PC, OX, Linux) and then run them on the CSDMS HPCC server "Beach" You can download the GUI through this link. The new GUI also offers VisIt, a multi-dimensional graphic package designed for Terra-scale, multi-processor rendering for HPC models in a client-server configuration. This valuable CSDMS functionality is being underwritten through the generous support of StatOil and ConocoPhillips.
Completed 3 highly varied exercises in linking six models (SedFlux, GC2D, CHILD, TopoFlow, CEM, HydroTrend) written by 6 authors, in 4 computer languages (c, c++, IDL, Matlab), 3 different grids (raster, non-uniform mesh, spatially-averaged), and 2 levels of granularity (process and modular) {and a partridge in a pear tree}. Valuable lessons learned, including the need for faster more robust grid meshing routines.
Dr. Maureen Berlin who is presently working on plume dynamics in Greenland fjords (satellites and modeling) to invert for time-dependent Ice Sheet melt (with Irina Overeem), will be later transitioning to a CSDMS CDI community coordinator and EKT innovator.
CSDMS will fund their visit to Boulder CO to work with staff scientists and develop their models into a CSDMS component.
Get your abstracts in (deadline April 30) to the Special CSDMS Symposia SS-11 Recent advances in numerical model on morphodynamics, sediment transport and stratigraphy, part of the 18th Intl Sedimentological Congress, Mendoza Argentina (Sept 26-Oct 1).
James P.M. Syvitski
→ August 2009 .jpg) Dear CSDMS members, I hope your summer is progressing smoothly. CSDMS is now four members short of 300, (with a surprise gift to the 300th member)! So we continue to expand our presence within the community. Below are brief snippets of updates. The CSDMS 2009 semi-annual report is now posted on our web site, for those wanting technical details. Year 3 continues its focus on:
Some Technical Update Examples:
Repository Updates:
Community Updates:
New CSDMS staff:
Learn more about them and their backgrounds in the semi-annual report. Remember:
Again thanks for your efforts! James P.M. Syvitski
→ February 2009 Dear CSDMS members,  Every 4 months I try to stay connected to our now >250 members, providing brief updates. Like you I do not like getting too many emails, our web site is always up to date, however. Year 1 & 2 largely dealt with logistics, organization, governance and communication (e.g. wiki). Year 2 & 3 has its focus on middleware (architecture, frameworks, and interface standards) and model and data repositories). Year 3-5 will be focused on members conducting advanced simulations, on the new CSDMS High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC). We have initially focused on community leaders, to get their many models into our repository, along with their metadata, all the models from the Slingerland book, the Pelletier book, and soon, the Parker e-book. We heartily thank the many individuals who have taken the time to submit their models along with their metadata, test cases, example input and output files. This is so important to our effort, and your favorite funding managers are noting which members are fulfilling their requirement to make their models and modeling tools publicly available. We are hoping that members will become familiar with the concept of ‘Initialize, Run, Finalize’ or IRF that is so important for component modeling. We will soon issue a very short How To help letter. AND if needed, please contact one of the software engineers (Eric Hutton or Mark Piper) to ask to schedule individual help. The NSF program managers are hoping that CSDMS members will flood their offices with CSDMS-related proposals. These can be individual efforts, or more collaborative with other working group members. They can be cyber-related, or advancing science through HPCC simulations, or provide new module connectivity, development of new algorithms, or be related to or in support of field programs. My only advice is for you to pay attention to the deliberations that are found in the CSDMS Strategic Plan, or information on the CSDMS web site, or the reports from Working or Focus Research Group meetings (see past meetings and their ppts or pdfs). The appropriate Chair, or I, or both, would be happy to provide letters of support for your CSDMS efforts. The proposals will be looked at NSF with favor, but still must pass the muster of panels, if applicable, and peer-review, who will continue to look to see if your proposals are indeed coherent and transformative. The CSDMS high performance computing cluster (HPCC) is up and running. We will soon, through our web site, be offering members access to the system, with accounts and login instructions. The HPCC is for members who have submitted code into the CSDMS Model Repository, to either run their models in advance of science, or to advance developing modeling efforts that will ultimately become part of the Repository. This is the pay to play rule. The HPCC is also for members who wish to apply compliant CSDMS models developed by others within the CSDMS framework, to help them advance their science. The caveat here is that many of the models in the Repository are still not CCA/OpenMI compliant. Finally the HPCC is for members who wish to experiment with new data systems in support CSDMS models, or visualizations of the model runs. You can read more about the HPCC and the ribbon-cutting ceremony held February 4, 2009 by visiting this link. Depending on the size and maturity of the CSDMS Group, between $8K and $9K is made available to Chairs in support of their annual meeting. This money is obviously not enough to cover the attendance of all members. Partial support is the norm for active members; so don’t forget to budget for travel cost in your research grants. Also, for those that cannot attend in person, you may be able to attend via Skype or similar connection, for some of the meetings. All ppts presented can be found on the CSDMS Wiki page under past meetings. I will also be working with NSF directors to see if we can find the funds for an all-hands meeting, likely near the end of Year 3 or beginning of Year 4. I will soon be attending the S2S MARGINS meeting, as it looks to its future, representing CSDMS. If you would like to influence the site selection for this program or the sampling strategy related to CSDMS models or efforts, please send me an email ASAP, with your thoughts, as I will be presenting in NZ on this issue in early April. Finally, reminders:
Again thanks for your efforts! Yours sincerely, James P.M. Syvitski → November 2008 Dear CSDMS members  Below I provide some brief updates on CSDMS developments (Fall 2008 quarterly missive).
So all the best to everyone, thanks for all of your hardwork ------ and see you soon at AGU!!!!!! James P.M. Syvitski → August 2008 Dear Community here are some recent highlights 
I hope your summer is going well! All the best James P.M. Syvitski → April 2008 Dear CSDMS members 
Again thanks for your efforts! James P.M. Syvitski → February 2008 Dear CSDMS Members  Annual Report: Enclosed please find the first CSDMS annual report. We were caught off guard in finding out that the NSF Annual Report is due 90 days before the end of our fiscal year (April 1). Most organizations issue their annual report after the end of the FY. The enclosed report, while informative, lacks graphics / photos. To better reflect all of our participants 2007 surface dynamic modeling efforts, we plan on releasing a FY annual report in April. Therefore would you please send in (to csdms@colorado.edu):
Strategic Plan: The CSDMS ExCom is busy working to complete the first draft of the CSDMS 5yr Strategic Plan. When asked, please offer your insight. Workshops and Meetings: The Cyber-informatics and Numerics WG recently met for two days and accomplished much on the CSDMS cyberinfrastructure (see enclosed annual report for details). Tao Sun and members are greatly thanked for their effort. Next up is the Community Sediment Model for Carbonate Systems, Feb. 27-29, 2008, Golden, CO; followed by the Coastal WG and Marine WG startup meetings, Orlando, FL, March 8, 2008. CSDMS is a co-sponsor with SEPM for the research conference Clinoform sedimentary deposits: The processes producing them and the stratigraphy defining them, Aug. 15-18, 2008, Rock Springs, WY. We encourage interested parties to participate in these efforts. Dedicated CSDMS Experimental Supercomputer: Great News!! The CSDMS Integration Facility is securing funds, largely through the University of Colorado, but with additional support from the U.S.G.S and possibly NOAA, to acquire a CSDMS-operated and dedicated Experimental Supercomputer (ES). The CSDMS ES is dedicated to support modeling efforts of our community. CSDMS choice of DOE's Common Component Architecture (CCA) with its supporting tools (e.g. Babel, Bocca, Ccaffeine) provides a mature high-performance computing (HPC) framework. ES details are in flux, but initial estimates suggest it will comprise between 256 - 400 cores, offering 3 to 5 teraflops of computing power, and configured with two HPC approaches - 1) massive shared memory among fewer processors, and 2) the more typical parallel configuration - each running Linux with Fortran, C and C++ compilers. Plans have the CSDMS ES linked to an NSF-proposed Front Range HPC with 7000 core, >100 teraflops, which in turn would be linked to the US TerraGrid, and/or the proposed Cheyenne NCAR/UCAR Petascale HPC dedicated to support the NSF Geoscience Collaboratory. To find out more please read the enclosed Annual Report. When up and running, we will provide CSDMS members information on how to access (free!) time on the ES for their CSDMS-related research and simulations. CSDMS Compliant Repository: CSDMS has developed a wiki-based website that is home to the CSDMS-CCA development project to present CSDMS latest developments on model protocols, model components, and instructive information about how scientists can use CCA in this environment. The website allows CSDMS members to easily add information to the website, to stay current and to further foster community around the project. The website presently contains a description on how to install the CCA development tools on various platforms (platforms include fedora, ubuntu, OSX10.5, and Solaris 8). Coding Camps: We are looking into running coding camps for both training in the use of the Common Component Architecture and its related tools, and for migrating code over to use in an HPC environment. More info as it develops. James P.M. Syvitski |
