ANUCLIM - Introduction

What does ANUCLIM do?

ANUCLIM is a software package of programs that enable the user to obtain estimates of monthly mean climate variables, bioclimatic parameters, and indices relating to crop growth. The main components of the package are ESOCLIM, BIOCLIM and GROCLIM. They use mathematical descriptions of the way a set of climate variables change across a region in order to estimate those climate variables, or parameters derived from them, at user specified points within the region. The mathematical descriptions are known as climate surfaces . The climate variables used are monthly mean values for minimum temperature, maximum temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, evaporation and others. In other words, there is one surface that describes how the monthly mean minimum temperature varies across the region in January, another describing how it varies in February and so on. Another set of surfaces describe each of the January, February, ... , December values for minimum temperature, another set for precipitation and so on.

• ESOCLIM (ESTimation Of CLIMate)is used to generate output files containing the climate variable estimates at specified points on the ground. These points can be supplied either as a list of coordinates or as a regular grid.
• BIOCLIM is used to generate bioclimatic surrogate parameters derived from the climate surfaces (e.g. Mean Temperature of Warmest Period, Precipitation of Driest Quarter etc) which are useful in determining the climatic envelope for plant and animal species. It can either summarise the bioclimatic parameters for a list of sites to produce a species profile, or generate output consisting of the calculated parameters for each point in the input file. These points can be supplied either as a list of coordinates or as a regular grid.
• BIOMAP uses output from BIOCLIM to predict possible habitat locations based on known habitat locations. It does this by matching bioclimatic parameters at the possible locations to the bioclimatic profile generated by BIOCLIM from the known habitat locations.
• GROCLIM uses the climatic variable estimates to model plant growth at specified points on the ground. These points can be supplied either as a list of coordinates or as a regular grid.

Climate surfaces

The climate surfaces have been generated by the ANUSPLIN package (Hutchinson 1999) from long-term monthly averages of the climate variables at fixed points within the region. ANUCLIM is usually supplied with surfaces for Australia, but surfaces for other countries including Canada, Papua-New Guinea and some African countries have been developed. Its also possible to develop your own surfaces for any other region for which you have good meteorological data.

For example, here are some of the locations of the maximum temperature stations used to generate the monthly mean daily maximum temperature surface for Australia:

Figure 1: The daily maximum temperature stations for part of Australia.

The climate surfaces are generated by ANUSPLIN, a separate package to ANUCLIM, and each climate surface file contains a set of coefficients that describe a thin-plate smoothing spline. Each file contains 12 surfaces (one for each month), and can be used to estimate the long term monthly mean climate variable values it describes at any point within its boundaries. Usually this point is specified in terms of the three independent variables that describe its position - longitude, latitude and elevation (or eastings, northings, and elevation if you have these instead).

Figure 2: Hypothetical climate surface estimates

Some surfaces use just 2 independent variables (longitude and latitude), while others may use something other than elevation for the third independent variable. An example is the radiation-with-rainfall surface, which describes the rainfall in terms of longitude, latitude and the monthly mean rainfall at that position. The logic behind using this set of independent variables is that since high rainfall implies high cloud cover, which in turn implies less radiation, radiation is correlated with rainfall. Using rainfall as one of the independent variables thus increases the surface's accuracy above that of a similar surface just fitted to longitude and latitude. Other examples are the Australian wind surfaces, which use the distance from the coast, rather than elevation, as the third independent variable.

Using the ANUCLIM main window

The main features of the main window are:

The File menu

• Preferences. Use this to change default settings for ANUCLIM.
• Change working directory. Use this to set the current working directory for ANUCLIM. If you have used ANUCLIM before, a list of the most recently used working directories should also appear. You can also select one of these to change you working directory. You don't have to change the working directory to that where your files are located, but it will make finding the files a little easier.
• Quit. Use this or the main window's title bar close operation to end your ANUCLIM session.

The ESOCLIM, BIOCLIM and GROCLIM menus

Each program is capable of being run with 4 different types of input data

• Grid data stored in Geographic Information System (GIS) files
• Grid data stored in plain text files.
• Site or point data stored in Geographic Information System (GIS) files
• Site or point data stored in plain text files.

To run the required program, select the option that corresponds to the format of your input data.

The surflist menu and region selection

The surflist menu lets you select the surflist file you will be using. The surflist file lists the climate surfaces you want to use, the boundaries for each surface and the countries or regions they describe. Each surflist file contains at least one country. A list of the countries in the selected surflist appears below the name of the current surflist file, and checkbuttons beside them let you choose the country or region you are working in.

The help menu

The Getting started and Browse manual items in the help menu show the relevant sections of this user manual in the help browser. Step-by-step help and help on... are a little different.

Step-by-step help

When step-by-step help is switched on (indicated by the checkbox next to this item in the help menu), the help browser will show help for each button or entry box you click on. To get help on a button without actually invoking it, you can use the 2nd or 3rd mouse buttons while step-by-step help is active.

To switch off step-by-step help, select it again from the help menu.

Help on ...

This is useful for getting help on a particular window item. When you choose Help on..., the cursor will change to a question mark when held over most window items. Clicking the mouse while the cursor is showing a question mark will display help for that item, but won't actually invoke the item in question.

When you start ANUCLIM, its working directory will be set to the directory you started it from (or a default "user" directory if you start it from the window manager or "start" menu). It will also revert to using the surflist file you were last using.

Getting started

• Start the application. Under Microsoft Windows, start ANUCLIM by selecting it from the Start menu. Under unix, start it by running the ANUCLIM startup script. The name and location of the startup script may vary from installation to installation, so contact your system administrator to find out where it is installed on your system. The default is /usr/local/bin/anuclim. It may also be available on your window manager menu or control panel if your system administrator has set it up.
• If you didn't start it in the directory that contains your data files, you can use Change working directory on the File menu. If you've used ANUCLIM 5 before there will probably also be a list of previously used directories that you can use as a shortcut.
• Check that the Surflist setting is appropriate (it should default to the surflist file distributed with ANUCLIM), and that the country or region of interest is checked on.
• Each of the 3 main constituents of ANUCLIM (ESOCLIM, BIOCLIM and GROCLIM) can be run using a number of different input file types.

  If your input data is in the form of ARC/INFO or IDRISI grid files, use the GRID from GIS files item of either the ESOCLIM, BIOCLIM or GROCLIM menus. If your data is in plain text files, use SITES from plain-text file. There are also options for grid data in plain text files and GIS site files.

  Under the BIOCLIM menu you will also find BIOMAP and a utility that will display histograms or cumulative frequency plots of any number of .pro files that BIOCLIM produces.

• Once you've chosen an item from one of the ESOCLIM, BIOCLIM or GROCLIM menus, a new window will appear containing all the relevant settings and options for that program. These windows are described fully in the manual sections titled BIOCLIM, ESOCLIM and GROCLIM.

  Work from the top of the window down, setting options, entering values and selecting files as needed. Once you've set all the required items, the Run button should become active. Click the run button to process your input files and generate the output file(s).

  You can go back and change any item on this window at any time, but working from top to bottom will help you to avoid missing some. As a general rule, the run button will be inactive (greyed-out) whenever some of the values are missing or invalid. When the run button is inactive, clicking it or leaving the mouse over it for a second will cause a little yellow box with an explanation of what is required to appear.

Test data and example files

ANUCLIM is supplied with example input files that you can use to familiarise yourself with its operation. These files and descriptions of their content are located in the test directory of the ANUCLIM installation.

Documentation

Documentation for ANUCLIM, including this user manual, is provided in the doc directory of your ANUCLIM installation. Most of the files are in the form of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and can be opened by any web browser (Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer, for instance). Open Contents.html to read this user manual. The on-line help also provides access to this manual.

Documentation for the test and example files is in the form of plain text files in the test directory of your ANUCLIM installation. See the README files in the test directory for more information.

Contacts

ANUCLIM is produced by the Centre for Resource and Environment Studies (CRES) at the Australian National University. If you need assistance with ANUCLIM, or wish to report a bug, email us on
anuclim-support@cres.anu.edu.au
For details on purchasing ANUCLIM, see the CRES web site
http://cres.anu.edu.au

Postal address
Centre for Resource and Environment Studies (CRES)
Australian National University ACT 0200
AUSTRALIA

Telephone: +61 2 6125 0668
Fax +61 2 6125 0651