Announcing LANDIS-II v8!

[Robert Scheller]

Dear LANDIS-II Users,

We are excited to announce the upcoming release of LANDIS-II v8!  The LANDIS-II board members and our dedicated programmer, Austen Ruzicka, have been diligently working behind the scenes on this for the past 12 months.  All of the funding came from user training; thanks to all of you for attending training sessions over the years to support this effort.

As the original developer, this version gives me the most satisfaction of them all.   This version resolves many outstanding issues.  Most exciting of all, all extensions are now cross-compatible, fulfilling our original goal set out in 2005 of creating a model that was a true platform for mixing and matching various representations of succession and disturbance.  

V8 has many updates and fixes. Our last update was in 2017.

Here they are listed in order of importance:

• Rebuild Cohort Libraries:  We have fundamentally restructured cohort libraries for full cross-compatibility across extensions.  See here for more information:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y_zW1inqNO85QVUvBQB4J3x1FM9hWMgSloUnS_ktxNQ/edit

  • As a result, Age-only Succession has been retired.

• Add full scenario metadata.  These data are now reflected in the main log file.
  

• Build model ‘pause’ into the Core.  This feature enables a model pause, during which input data could be re-loaded.  

• Update .NET

• Remove Shade and Fire Tolerance from species input file.  These are no longer universal parameters for succession or fire disturbance, respectively.

• Add Full Name to species input file.  For many outputs, the full name may be preferable over the species code.  

• Other minor updates:  

  • The Climate Library has been updates with a new input format and it is MUCH FASTER

  • Various minor code changes (relevant only to developers)

  • The restructuring of GitHub repositories for consistency 

The full suite of v8-compatible extensions will be rolled out on September 27, 2024. 

Now, we are dedicated but not perfect.  When (not if) you discover errors or discrepancies, contact the developer for each extension and please be patient as we resolve errors.

In preparation for the release, our website with the list of extensions will be temporarily empty beginning on September 13th.  The two week ‘black out’ window will give us time to merge branches and test all interfaces to extension installers and example files.

To use v8, you will need to uninstall v7.    More on that later!