Penumbra: A spatially distributed, mechanistic model for simulating ground-level incident solar energy across heterogeneous landscapes.

ABSTRACT: Landscape solar energy is a significant environmental driver, yet it remains complicated to model well. Several solar radiation models simplify the complexity of light by estimating it at discrete point locations or by averaging values over larger areas. These modeling approaches may be useful in certain cases, but they are unable to provide spatially distributed and temporally dynamic representations of solar energy across entire landscapes. We created a landscape-scale ground-level shade and solar energy model called Penumbra to address this deficiency. Penumbra simulates spatially distributed ground-level shade and incident solar energy at user-defined timescales by modeling local and distant topographic shading and vegetative shading. Spatially resolved inputs of a digital elevation mo

SUBMITTER: Halama JJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6300277 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature