Nowadays, global environmental change probably represents one of the most important concerns on our planet. Thus, there has been growing interest from different stakeholders to understand the past, current and future processes linked with this global issue. In this context, environmental modelling plays a relevant role, not only as a useful tool to comprehend complex environmental phenomena but also because their outcomes are being used in the decision making carried on by relevant actors.
In this blog we will be discussing different interesting approaches to environmental processes using models, hence, as an introduction it is appropriate to highlight first the relevance of outcomes assessment. Given that models are abstractions of reality, it is necessary to point out that quality of input dataset, uncertainty, hypotheses as well as any theoretical definition underpinning the model must be considered as part of the results interpretation. Although normally scientists running a particular model have considerable knowledge of the weaknesses and strengths of this, the outcomes assessment is not trivial. Indeed, as Matthewset al. (2010) argued, it can be defined phases or typical evaluations for environmental modelling and software (EMS) outcomes. These commonly are peer review, validation, reliability, usability, relevance, interpretability and utility. Each of these instances of evaluation entails its own challenges, such as intangibility of EMS outputs or different results interpretations.
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Figure 1. Colorful View of Aerosol Movement (Nasa, Goddard Space Flight Center, 2012) (video)
Models have become a useful and powerful tool for a huge concern, and their suitable application is also an enormous challenge. Therefore, I’m inviting anyone interested in any field within environmental science to enrich the discussion about modelling application and its role in the understanding of global environmental change.
‘Modelling is described as an art because it involves experience and intuition as well as the development of a set of mathematical skills’ (Wainwright and Mulligan, 2013).
