A parallel individual-based model of white-tailed deer in the Florida Everglades

Computer models can be used to simulate the interactions between animals and their environments. This thesis presents the parallelization of three main com-ponents of the SIMPDEL (Spatially-Explicit Inividual-Based Simulation Model of Florida Panther and White-Tailed Deer in the Everglades and Big Cypress Landscapes) model on a 32 processor Thinking Machines CM-5. The SIMPDEL model was developed to analyze and predict the effects of alternative water man-agement scenarios in South Florida on the long-term populations of white-tailed deer and Florida panther. The model simulates the aging, reproduction, foraging, growth, and mortality of individual animals over a period of 23 years. Results were very similar in both sequential and parallel models and speed improvements ranging from 8.9 to 27.0 were achieved for the parallel model over the sequential model executing on a Sun SPARCstation 5.