User Forum of Software BASEMENT

Riccardo_P

User

From: Milan, Italy

Registered: 2019-06-01

Posts: 1

Modelling vegetation dynamics

Hi, I'm a student from "Politecnico di Milano" and I'm working on an initial idea for a master thesis concerning the relevance and impact of vegetation on the dynamic of a river.

I've been recommended to look for this software and in the Reference manual I found a section concerning exactly the modelling of the vegetation factor.
However I'm new to this software as I never used it or heard about it during my various courses of study and, even after looking at the User manual, I didn't really understand how this aspect is implemented in pratice when working with the software: for this reason I will be really grateful for some clarifications on the matter.

And last thing I will be also really grateful to have an opinion on the "level of competence" required to use the software: after reading the User manual I had the impression that to be able to use it efficiently it is required a solid background on hydraulic models and how they work. Is this impression correct? Do you recommend it for someone with a relatively small experience and background as myself? (I just had some experience using Hec-Ras during my career at Politecnico).

I thank you in advance for your time and I apologize if I posted this message in the wrong section.

Fra

Developer

Registered: 2019-06-12

Posts: 1

Re: Modelling vegetation dynamics

Hi Riccardo,

the vegetation module implemented in BASEMENT is largely based on the journal publication of Bertoldi et al, 2014 (you can find the reference in the Manual), where you can find the model's concepts and ideas behind. The BASEMENT manual reports a more detail explanation on the mathematical model and how is implemented. However, there are no tutorials or test cases available online for this part.

Overall, I would strongly recommend you to get some experience in BASEMENT (with both hydro- and morphodynamic models) before going into the vegetation model. The model was mainly intended for research purposes and applications to real cases (if you plan this) might be not straightforward and a good basic knowledge of hydraulics and morphodynamic processes is definitely needed to interpret the results. As soon you get familiar with the model, you will be able to post some more specific issues and get some help from the community as well.

I hope this helps.

Best,
Francesco