Advancing the application of a model-independent open-source geospatial tool for national-scale spatiotemporal simulations

摘要

Growing demands for geospatial application of environmental models have led to tool development for conducting simulations spatially. The model-independent, open-source tool "Geospatial Simulation" (GeoSim) has been developed previously. Based on previous applications at field scale, this study advances GeoSim application for national-scale and multi-year simulations. The widely-applied AquaCrop model was implemented by GeoSim to simulate wheat yield and irrigation requirements on a daily step across China from 2000 to 2009. The spatial inputs required by AquaCrop were minimized and 6915 unique response units were identified among the primary 116,801 polygons. It took around 20 h to perform the 10-year simulations. Post-processing of simulation outputs permitted mapping at the original 5 arc-minute resolution. The novel methods developed in this study demonstrate new opportunities for efficiently managing national-scale and multi-year simulations with high resolution. They render AquaCrop more suitable for studies on the water-food nexus at large scales, which are more policy-relevant.