Exploring the behavior of the spring ecosystem model using an object-oriented database system

Landscape and ecosystem models have typically been viewed as "black boxes", that given a set of inputs yield a set of outputs. This view does not easily lend itself to investigations as to why a model behaves as it does, especially when multiple models are coupled together to create a larger model. We hypothesize that, for this type of investigation, a visual multimedia tool is necessary to gain insight into the temporal behavior of the model. In order to facilitate the exploration of the behavior of one particular well-known landscape model, we have coupled the model with an object oriented database system and a data plotting and visualization package. Using this system, we have created animations of the model's output and used them to discover interesting properties of the model. In our demonstration, we display these animations and discuss how such a system can be used as an aid to explore hypotheses about the model's behavior.