Workshop

Skill assessment of plankton functional type models on a global scale
February 5-7, 2007, Plymouth UK

Convener
Icarus Allen, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, UK

Introduction
This workshop addressed the issue of how to assess the skill of models of differing complexity on a global scale, making use of existing in situ data, and satellite earth observation (including PFT's from space), to inform the evaluation of the fundamental assumptions, strengths and weaknesses of the PFT approach.

The workshop brought together 30 ecosystem modellers and experimentalists from the UK, Europe and North America to discuss approaches to assessing ecosystem models in a global scale. Over the three days of the work-shop there was a robust debate of a number of topics, including a review of current model assessment techniques, assessment of the avail-ability of datasets for model testing and development, resulting in a number of recommendations for future model assessment, observational and experimental activities. In particular, we worked toward defining a hierarchical approach to model validation, which encompasses issues of scale and complexity along with qualitative and quantitative approaches. These need to be applied in the context of the modelling questions being asked. The hierarchical approach is being summarised into an overview paper.

Workshop proceedings pdf

Workshop report pdf

Workshop summary: issue 7 of the IMBER Update

Workshop presentations

Workshop participants

Contact Icarus Allen, jia@pml.ac.uk for more information.