The Landlab tutorials#

Two papers have been written describing Landlab, both are open access:

Note

We highly recommend reading both before starting on the steps below.

1. Format and Outline#

You will alternate between reading documentation on the User Guide finding information in the Reference Manual, and working through the tutorials.

The tutorials are presented as Jupyter notebooks, which contain a mixture of text, images, and code blocks. When you look at the tutorials, don’t just read them. Start by clearing the results by selecting Kernel → Restart & Clear Output, then go ahead and try running each code block as you come to it.

1.1 A motivating example#

1.2 Using the Documentation#

The Landlab Reference Manual contains documentation for most functions in the Landlab package. It is the comprehensive counterpart to the anecdotal tutorials.

  • Spend some time clicking around in the User Guide and Reference Manual to get a sense for what is there. Tip: to find a particular command, click on Index and use your browser’s search function to search for a command by name or keyword. For example, look at the LinearDiffuser, which you just used in the prior tutorial.

1.3 Introduction to the Landlab Grid and Fields#

First, lets look at the User Guide page on Landlab grids.

Extra credit: Go back to the Hobley et al. 2017 publication and identify the ordering conventions of nodes, links, and other grid elements.

1.4 Working with Digital Elevtion Models (DEMs)#

1.5 Plotting#

1.6 Boundary conditions#

1.7 Introduction to Components#

1.8 Advanced Grid and Fields: Gradients, Flux-Divergence, Mapping#

In addition to having lots of important information about adjacency of nodes, links, and other grid elements, the Landlab Grid object has a number of built-in functions for calculating quantities like gradients and flux-divergence, and for mapping quantities from nodes to links and so forth. Work through these tutorials to get a sense of this functionality: