THE CHESAPEAKE BAY VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT (CBVE) - INITIAL RESULTS FROM THE PROTOTYPICAL SYSTEM

The authors develop a modeling framework that integrates hydrodynamic circulation models and various biological models with the computer vis ualization paradigm of the virtual world to investigate coupled linkag es between physics and biology within the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. Th ese initial efforts, demonstrated at Supercomputing '95 on the Immersa Desk, focus on how environmental forcing affects the flow in the Chesa peake Bay and how biological distributions change in response to this circulation. The authors use the virtual environment to visualize time -dependent, three-dimensional, multivariate ecological data sets, This visualization process greatly aids in the interpretation and synthesi s of the supercomputer-based numerical simulations and provides new in sights into the ecological consequences of physical and biological int eractions. Viewing, navigating through, and interacting with multidime nsional fields (e.g,, salinity, circulation vectors, larval fish distr ibutions) in the virtual environment provides a sense of presence that greatly improves one's ability to understand inherently complex proce sses, thereby advancing the implementation of coupled physical-biologi cal models, The use of data sonification to portray modeled data in th e virtual environment also improves one's ability to interpret the num erical results.