Underworld

a long term geodynamics simulation platform

Underworld & SPModel

SPModel can be run as a module for Underworld to study the coupling between tectonics and surface processes. The coupling of Underworld and SPModel was funded by an ARC linkage grant with the support from a petroleum company.

The image on the right illustrates a buoyant blob (Underworld) deforming an erodable surface (SPModel). The surface is modified by the process of ersosion and sediment transport which play a role in the tectonic response by redistributing surface loads and by thermal blanketing.

SPModel is another parallel Geophysical simulation code developed under the StGermain framework. SPModel implements a parallel algorithm for deriving a large-scale (continental) landscape evolution governed by several generalized classes of processes, namely: short-range (hill-slope) sediment transport processes, long-range (channel) sediment transport processes, marine sedimentation, flexural response to surface loading-unloading, kinematic imposed surface displacements designed to simulate surface rupturing faulting, generalized tectonic displacements not associated with surface rupturing faults, and sea-level change.

SPModel was developed as part of the Australian Computational Earth Systems Simulator (ACcESS), an Australian Government National Research Facility, in collaboration between The University of Melbourne and VPAC, based on CASCADE algorithms with rights granted from the Australian National University. See the ancestry and SPModel User Guide pages for full details of background, acknowledgements and associated rights.

About Surface Process Modelling

The modelling of landscape evolution, or geomorphology, is important because it allows us to understand how mountain ranges, river systems, and other landscape features came to be as they are and how they will change in future. This in turn can help to elucidate how our climates, ecologies and fauna evolved; a heavily eroded landscape supports less forest, rainfall is affected by mountain topology, and so on. The application of surface process modelling could produce enormous economic and societal benefits in a raft of fields such as petroleum resource evaluation, land degradation, pollution dispersal, mine site rehabilitation and flood mitigation.

Surface process modelling is also a necessary counterpart to solid earth geophysics to provide the complete picture of a geological system. Indeed, the two processes are coupled; tectonic uplift affects the rate of erosion, while the movement of sediments changes the gravitational stress over an area and the build-up of heat, influencing what goes on below the continental crust.

SPModel Documentation

Last Updated: 23 September 2009 by Wendy Mason & Steve Quenette.

Some content sourced from http://jaeger.earthsci.unimelb.edu.au/SPM/UserGuide/index.html.