Application Descripion
The
BayWalk application was created primarily as a scien-
tifi c visualization and collaboration tool for exploring the
results of a complex computational science simulation. In
the computational model, the three-dimensional bay was
divided into 4000 volumetric cells or
“
bricks.
”
The simula-
tion calculates fl ow information and the presence of certain
substances throughout the bay over time. There are many
variables at each cell in the simulation. However, for the ini-
tial study only three were visualized
—
chlorophyll, salinity,
anddissolved oxygen.
More recently, two more variables
were added — nitrogen and phosphorus. (The latter two are
of particular interest because they are contained in fertil-
izer, one of the sources of ecological concern.) The compu-
tational model has been calibrated to match observed data
by modifying coeffi cients and other computational param-
eters so that the simulation results based on known initial
conditions match the actual results observed in nature.