Coupling and Environmental Forcing

Coupling and Environmental Forcing

This page introduces how OSMOSE uses environmental forcing and how it can be coupled with lower-trophic-level or biogeochemical models.

OSMOSE can be forced by external environmental and biological data, including resource biomass, temperature, oxygen, salinity, habitat suitability, species distribution maps, and climate scenario outputs. These forcings allow the model to represent bottom-up effects, spatial habitat constraints, seasonal variability, interannual variability, and long-term environmental change.

Coupling is especially important when OSMOSE is used as part of an end-to-end ecosystem modelling framework. In this context, lower-trophic-level or biogeochemical models can provide resource fields and environmental drivers to OSMOSE. Depending on the application, coupling can be one-way, where OSMOSE receives external forcing, or two-way, where OSMOSE and the lower-trophic-level model exchange information during the simulation.

Pages in this topic

• Overview
  Provides a general introduction to environmental forcing and model coupling in OSMOSE.

• Resource species
  Describes how resource species are represented and how low-trophic-level biomass fields are used as forcing inputs.

• Environmental drivers
  Describes the environmental variables that can influence OSMOSE processes, including variables used for habitat suitability, movement, growth, mortality, or bioenergetic processes.

• One-way coupling
  Describes applications where OSMOSE receives external forcing from another model or dataset, without feedback from OSMOSE to the forcing model.

• Two-way coupling
  Describes applications where OSMOSE exchanges information with another model, for example by receiving plankton biomass and returning predation mortality or detritus-related information.

• Climate scenarios
  Describes how environmental and biological forcings can be prepared for future scenarios, including climate-change applications.

Role in OSMOSE workflows

Environmental forcing can enter OSMOSE in several ways. Resource biomass fields can provide food for small predators or early life stages. Environmental variables can affect habitat suitability, movement, bioenergetic processes, or mortality. Species distribution maps can constrain or guide the spatial distribution of species or life stages. Climate scenarios can be used to explore how ecosystem structure and fisheries dynamics may change under future environmental conditions.

The practical preparation of forcing files is usually done before running the core simulator. Some steps may be handled directly by the OSMOSE R package, while others depend on external datasets, species distribution models, biogeochemical models, or climate downscaling workflows.

How to use this page

Users preparing input files should read Resource species together with Resource forcing and Species distribution maps.

Users working on end-to-end modelling applications should start with One-way coupling and Two-way coupling.

Users working on projections or scenario simulations should read Climate scenarios and then continue with Run scenarios.