Combining Model Meshes

I’ve had fun messing with the popular (and open-source!) landscape evolution model, Landlab. Landlab itself comes packaged with a ton of different modules and components allowing one to conduct a variety of numerical experiments.

I wanted to see if other mesh generators could be coupled to the Landlab interface. This would enable testing a variety of mesh schemes that go beyond the scope of the Landlab project itself. My driving question was: can we see the effects of local grid resolution in Landlab?

To answer this question, I turned to the mesh generator dmsh, and the C-package triangle embedded within the hydrodynamic model anuga.

This little project has turned into a “lab” component in the CSDMS suite of educational lab exercises. Additional information and notebooks are available in the project documentation.

A short set of images showcasing some of these results using Landlab’s flow accumulator are shown below:

A mesh with variable resolution (left), and the source smooth topography (right)

 

The variable resolution mesh without cell outlines.

 

Flow accumulation on the variable resolution mesh. Resolution differences make the top and bottom halves of the image look quite different!