The full name of the project is "Coupled Water Balance and Vegetation Optimality Model", in short "VOM". The model predicts vegetation water use based on meteorological information, soils and topography only, without the need for prescribing site-specific vegetation properties or calibration against observed fluxes.
The programme was originally developed by Stan Schymanski at the University of Western Australia (2002-2006), then at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry by Stan Schymanski, Andreas Ostrowski and Steffen Richter (2007-2011), then by Stan Schymanski at ETH Zurich (2011-2017) and since 2017 by Remko Nijzink and Stan Schymanski at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology ( www.list.lu ).
Latest:
The model documentation can be found at: https://vom.readthedocs.io/
An offline version of the documentation can be found in html-format in the folder VOM-docu/build/html/. Two additional pdf files containing equations can be found in VOM-docu: VOM-docu/Equations.pdf and VOM-docu/Watbal3.pdf.
The directory VOM-docu/Fordocu contains automatically generated documenation based on comments in the .f90 files. This one is helpful for understanding the structure of the source code.
Schymanski, S. J., Roderick, M. L., Sivapalan, M., Hutley, L. B. and Beringer, J.: A test of the optimality approach to modelling canopy properties and CO2 uptake by natural vegetation, Plant, Cell & Environment, 30(12), 1586–1598, doi:10.1111/j.1365-3040.2007.01728.x, 2007.
Schymanski, S. J., Roderick, M. L., Sivapalan, M., Hutley, L. B. and Beringer, J.: A canopy-scale test of the optimal water use hypothesis, Plant Cell & Environment, 31, 97–111, doi:10.1111/j.1365-3040.2007.01740.x, 2008a.
Schymanski, S. J., Sivapalan, M., Roderick, M. L., Beringer, J. and Hutley, L. B.: An optimality-based model of the coupled soil moisture and root dynamics, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 12(3), 913–932, doi:10.5194/hess-12-913-2008, 2008b.
Schymanski, S. J., Sivapalan, M., Roderick, M. L., Hutley, L. B. and Beringer, J.: An Optimality-Based Model of the Dynamic Feedbacks between Natural Vegetaton and the Water Balance, Water Resources Research, 45, W01412, doi:10.1029/2008WR006841, 2009.
Schymanski, S. J., Roderick, M. L. and Sivapalan, M.: Using an optimality model to understand medium and long-term responses of vegetation water use to elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations, AoB PLANTS, 7, plv060, doi:10.1093/aobpla/plv060, 2015.
The initial author of the code and documentation is Stan Schymanski, and initial contributors are Andreas Ostrowski and Steffen Richter.
The main development line (trunk) of the VOM is stored in the following structure:
VOM_Fortran
/vom-code
The model code written in Fortran 90 (file extension: f90)
/vom-scripts
Different unix scripts to run the model (file extension: script) for:
/single_computer
/cluster
You have to adapt the scripts (see documentation: How to run the model, and also the description in script files)
/vom-docu
The model documentation is available in html-code, including some text and pdf files
/vom-input
input files needed by the model and example forcing data