Welcome to MESHflow’s documentation!

MESHflow streamlines the setup of MESH models for any temporal or spatial domain. Written in Python, it is accessible via a Command Line Interface.

MESH (Modélisation Environnementale communautaire - Surface Hydrology) is the hydrology land-surface scheme (HLSS) of Environment and Climate Change Canada’s (ECCC’s) community environmental modelling system (Pietroniro et al. 2007) [1]. It complements ECCC’s GEM-Hydro modelling platform. MESH supports multiple surface component models within a single framework, enabling direct comparison using identical forcings, interpolation, grids, periods, time steps, and output settings. A key feature is its ability to read atmospheric forcings from files, allowing offline testing and use of data from observations or reanalysis products.

The evolution of Environment Canada’s atmospheric-hydrologic-land-surface modelling system is detailed in Pietroniro et al. (2007) and Wheater et al. (2022) [2]. Model development began with varying degrees of coupling, from linked models requiring separate calibration to fully coupled systems (Soulis et al. 2005) [3]. MESH originated from the WATCLASS model, which integrated the WATFLOOD routing model with the Canadian Land Surface Scheme (CLASS), and served as a foundation for coupling with weather and climate models.

Note

This project is under active development. Current release is v0.1.0-dev3.

Contents:

• Quick Usage
  • Installation
  • General Usage
  • Configuration
  • Geospatial Data
  • Forcing Data
  • Land Cover Data
  • Additional Settings
  • Other Relevant Options
• Example Instantiation for Bow River at Calgary
• API Reference
  • Core API
  • Utility Functions

Footnotes

[1]

Pietroniro, A., V. Fortin, N. Kouwen, C. Neal, R. Turcotte, B. Davison, D. Verseghy et al. “Development of the MESH modelling system for hydrological ensemble forecasting of the Laurentian Great Lakes at the regional scale.” Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 11, no. 4 (2007): 1279-1294.

[2]

Wheater, Howard S., John W. Pomeroy, Alain Pietroniro, Bruce Davison, Mohamed Elshamy, Fuad Yassin, Prabin Rokaya et al. “Advances in modelling large river basins in cold regions with Modélisation Environmentale Communautaire—Surface and Hydrology (MESH), the Canadian hydrological land surface scheme.” Hydrological Processes 36, no. 4 (2022): e14557.

[3]

Soulis, E. D., N. Kouwen, Al Pietroniro, F. R. Seglenieks, K. R. Snelgrove, P. Pellerin, D. W. Shaw, and L. W. Martz. “A framework for hydrological modelling in MAGS.” Prediction in Ungauged Basins: Approaches for Canada’s Cold Regions, edited by: Spence, C., Pomeroy, JW and Pietroniro, A., Canadian Water Resources Association (2005): 119-138.