Site Parameters: netCDF File

Site parameters can be stored in either a netCDF file, or a text-format site.100 file. A netCDF file for a single site is produced when you specify the restart file option on the command line ("-sf"), or optionally when you use the CopySoil, CopySite, and other utilties that create site files.

You can view the parameters with any program which reads netCDF files. The R package ncdf4 will extract the parameter values. In a console window you can display the values using the netCDF utility ncdump.

A site netCDF file has the following organization:

netcdf siteParameters {
    dimensions:
        nameLen = 20 ;
        descLen = 80 ;
        numParams = 323 ;

    variables:
        uint id ;
            id:long_name = "site parameter identifier" ;
            id:_FillValue = 4294967295U ;
        byte siteType ;
            siteType:long_name = "site parameter set type" ;
            siteType:_FillValue = 0b ;
        string name ;
            name:long_name = "site parameter set name" ;
            name:_Encoding = "ASCII" ;
        string description ;
            description:long_name = "site parameter set description" ;
            description:_Encoding = "ASCII" ;
        float value(numParams) ;
            value:long_name = "site parameter values" ;
            value:_FillValue = -9999.f ;

    // global attributes:
        :FileType = 7b ;
        :SetType = 1b ;           // 0 = DayCent5, 1 = Century5
        :LastModifiedWho = "" ;
        :title = "Century5 site parameters" ;
        :institution = " " ;
        :contact = " " ;
        :copyright = " " ;
        :conventions = "CF-1.0" ;
        :references = " " ;
        :source = " " ;
        :comment = " " ;
        string :history = "Created: 2013/09/05 11:26:55" ;
        :LastModifiedWhen = "2013/09/05 11:26:55" ;

    data:
}

See Also

site.100 file
Site Spatial netCDF file
Site Parameters
Utilities
ID Numbers in Model Configuration