CATS is a modelling framework designed to simulate the effects of environmental changes on the spatio-temporal distribution of plant species considering their population dynamics and dispersal processes. CATS is discrete in space (grid-based) and time (using annual cycles).
CATS facilitates simulations at large spatio-temporal extents using grids of high resolutions and allows a fine-grained control of demographic and dispersal processes. An MPI version which allows a single simulation to be run distributed across multiple computers is also provided.
CATS was developed at the the Vienna Institute for Nature Conservation & Analyses (V.I.N.C.A.) and the University of Vienna's Biodiversity Dynamics and Conservation Group at the Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research.
A description of CATS can be found in
[link to journal article]. To get started, refer to the
quick start guide. A detailed description can be found in the
manual.
See also
Example data.
catsr is a wrapper package to make configure and run CATS simulations from R. It can be downloaded here: catsr_0.5.2.tar.gz.
The R.utils package is required to install the catsr package. It can be installed with
install.packages("R.utils")
Plotting CATS results is currently slow due to a workaround. We are investigating this issue.
After downloading, it can be installed with
install.packages("catsr_0.5.2.tar.gz", repos=NULL, type="source")
short introduction for the catsr package can be displayed using
library(catsr)
vignette("catsr")
The source code for the catsr R package is availabe from https://gitlab.phaidra.org/bdc/catsr
Source code
CATS is open source and licensed under the terms of GNU Public License, version 3 or later. It is written in C and depends on GDAL and the GNU Scientific Library.
CATS is developed and usually run on Linux, but a cross-compiled version for Microsoft Windows is provided (see below).
If you want to build CATS yourself (which is the recommended option), please refer to docs/build-instructions.html for build instructions.
The source code for CATS is available from the University of Vienna's gitlab instance.
You can obtain a copy of the source code by either cloning the git repository using the following command:
git clone https://gitlab.phaidra.org/bdc/cats.git
or by downloading the current source code archive:
cats-1.0.3.tar.gz.
Pre-compiled Windows version
A pre-compiled executable for the Windows operating system including the example data is available
cats-1.0.3-quick-start-windows.zip. Please see the contained file
README.
CATS for windows without the example data:
cats-1.0.3-windows.zip
Please note that the executable for Windows is provided for demonstration purposes only. It has been cross-compiled on Linux and therefore does not match the performance of a natively compiled version. Please also refer to the contained file COPYING.
Data for the example in the quickstart guide is availabe as a zip file
cats-quick-start-data.zip. Extract the contents into the same directory as the CATS executable or follow the instructions in the
quick start guide.
Gattringer, A., Wessely, J., Hülber, K., Moser, D., & Dullinger, S. (2023). CATS: A high-performance software framework for simulating plant migration in changing environments. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 00, 1–7.
https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.14180
The development of CATS was funded by the following projects:
- European Union 6th Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (project ECOCHANGE, GOCE-CT-2007-036866)
- Austrian Science Fund FWF (project number P 31014 and I 5083)
- European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (project MICROCLIM, Grant agreement number 883669E
For questions or comments please send an email to the CATS service email address:
cats.cvl@univie.ac.at.