Abstract
The ability to predict net carbon exchange and production of vegetation
in response to predicted atmospheric and climate change is critical to assessing the
potential impacts of these changes. Mathematical models provide an important tool in the
study of whole plant, canopy and ecosystem responses to global environmental change.
Because this requires prediction beyond experience mechanistic rather than empirical
models are needed. The uniformity and strong understanding of the photosynthetic process
which is the primary point of response of plant production to global atmospheric change
provides a basis for such an approach. Existing modelling systems have been developed
primarily for expert modellers and have not been easily accessible to experimentalists,
managers and students. Here we describe a modular modelling system operating within
Windows to provide this access. WIMOVAC (Windows Intuitive Model of Vegetation response to
Atmosphere and Climate Change) is designed to facilitate the modelling of various aspects
of plant photosynthesis with particular emphasis on the effects of global climate change.
WIMOVAC has been designed to run on IBM PC compatible computers running Microsoft Windows.
The package allows the sophisticated control of the simulation processes for
photosynthesis through a standardised Windows user interface and provides automatically
formatted results as either tabulated data or as a range of customisable graphs. WIMOVAC
has been written in Microsoft Visual Basic, to facilitate the rapid development of user
friendly modules within the familiar Windows framework, whilst allowing a structured
development. The highly interactive nature of controls adopted by WIMOVAC makes it
suitable for research, management and educational purposes.
Key Words: carbon dioxide; climate change; mathematical model; Microsoft Windows;
photosynthesis; plant canopies; temperature; Visual Basic