TRANSCODE – Towards community-driven, open and FAIR ecohydrological modeling

Mechanistic ecohydrological models are essential tools to accurately simulate the impacts of climate change on the water, carbon, and nutrient cycles. However, there are very few models available to the community which can holistically simulate such a wide range of processes and most of them are written in low-level programming languages (e.g., C++ or FORTRAN), hindering model accessibility to new users. In this regard, Tethys and Chloris (T&C), a state-of-the-art ecohydrological model written in MATLAB, offers a strong foundation for creating an accessible community-driven model. TRANSCODE aims to transform T&C into a FAIR model by redesigning its architecture for modularity and re-implementing it in Julia, an open-source language which marries the computational efficiency of low-level programming languages such as FORTRAN and the accessibility of high-level languages such as MATLAB. This translation will improve computational efficiency, foster open code contributions from the community, and facilitate interoperability with other models. Specifically, the project will create a modular, comprehensively tested, highly efficient, and easily accessible version of T&C, termed T&C-Julia. TRANSCODE has the potential to significantly benefit the Earth science community and advance the field of ecohydrological modelling by providing a versatile, state-of-the-art, and open-source modelling platform.


Projects duration | Oct. 2024 – Sep. 2025

People | Akash Koppa

Funding | Open Research Data (ORD) Program of the ETH Board