This file contains all of the information needed to initialize the soil column for thermal flux solutions within each grid cell, vegetation type, and snow band. Typically VIC assumes that the grid cell surface temperature starts at air temperature. This assumption does not cause problems if you run the model for at least one complete year before analyzing the output. However, in some situations you may want to run shorter time scales, or actually use the first year of the simulation. To use the soil initialization file set the INIT_SOIL variable in the global control file.
Column |
Variable Type |
Variable Units |
Variable Name |
Description |
| 1 | integer | N/A | cellnum | Cell number used to find the initialization data for the correct grid cell |
| 2 | integer | N/A | veg | Vegetation type within the grid cell |
| 3 | integer | N/A | band | Snow elevation band within the grid cell |
| 4 | integer | N/A | Nnodes | Number of soil thermal nodes |
| 5 | float | m | fdepth | Initial depth of frozen soil |
| 6 | float | m | tdepth | Initial depth of thawed soil |
| 7 : (Nlayer + 6) | float * | mm/mm | init_moist[] | Initial unfrozen soil moisture content for each layer |
| (Nlayer + 7) : ( 2*Nlayer + 6 ) | float | mm/mm | init_ice[] | Initial soil ice content for each layer |
The following repeats for each soil thermal node (Nnodes). Each Grid cell, vegetation type, and snow band combination takes only one line in the files.
Column |
Variable Type |
Variable Units |
Variable Name |
Description |
| 1 | float | m | depth[] | Depth of the current soil thermal node (node 0 should have a depth of 0, and node Nnode-1 should have a depth of dp) |
| 2 | float | C | T[] | Initial temperature at each soil thermal node depth. |
