HR: 0830h
AN: ED31C-1179    [PDF]
TI: A Simple Numerical Model of the Global Carbon Cycle for the Classroom
AU: * Snow, J T
EM: jsnow@ou.edu
AB: Using the STELLA programming software, a numerical model of the global carbon cycle has been developed for educational purposes. The basic model is a somewhat simplified version of box models developed by researchers in the 1980s to explore the cycling of carbon on time scales of years to centuries. The model contains four reservoirs (or "stocks") of carbon -- atmosphere, ocean, and land plants - interconnected by a variety of processes (or "flows"). The presentation will demonstrate the model and cover three topics regarding its use in the classroom. 1) Construction of the model by lower division students, focusing on animating a static diagram of the carbon cycle and emphasizing the importance of the concepts of balance and conservation of carbon to continually check the work in progress. 2) Introduction of students to real-world model tuning to eliminate both starting transients and small imbalances introduced by representing continuous functions in finite difference form. 3) Exploration of model behavior using a variety of perturbations. The perturbations considered include large fires leading to the destruction of the land plants (an internal redistribution of carbon already present in the model) and the burning of fossil fuels (the distribution of "new" carbon added to the model from the outside). The closing discussion will emphasize the importance of developing students' abilities to interpret graphical output in terms of the scenario being played out in the model.
DE: 6605 Education
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting