gospl 2026.7.14

gospl / Global Scalable Paleo Landscape Evolution /

gospl is an open source, GPL-licensed library providing a scalable parallelised Python-based numerical model to simulate landscapes and basins reconstruction at global scale.

Statement of need

Since the ’90s, much software has been designed to estimate long-term catchment dynamics, drainage evolution as well as sedimentary basin formation in response to various mechanisms such as tectonic or climatic forcing. These models rely on a set of mathematical and physical expressions that simulates sediment erosion, transport and deposition and can reproduce the first order complexity of Earth’s surface geomorphological evolution.

Yet, we were still missing a tool to evaluate global scale evolution of Earth surface and its interaction with the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the tectonic and mantle dynamics. gospl is the first model designed to address this gap. It can be used to better characterise many aspects of the Earth system ranging from the role of atmospheric circulation on physical denudation, from the influence of erosion and deposition of sediments on mantle convection, from the location and abundance of natural resources to the evolution of life.

Documentation

1. an overview of the different ways to install the code,
2. some technical notes on the underlying physics and implementation,
3. a user guide with some notebook examples, and
4. the API references.

Contributing to gospl

Contributions of any kind to gospl are more than welcome. That does not mean new code only, but also improvements of documentation and user guide, additional tests (ideally filling the gaps in existing suite) or bug reports or ideas on what could be added or done better.

All contributions should go through our GitHub repository. Bug reports, ideas or even questions should be raised by opening an issue on the GitHub tracker. Suggestions for changes in code or documentation should be submitted as a pull request. However, if you are not sure what to do, feel free to open an issue. All discussion will then take place on GitHub to keep the development of gospl transparent.

If you decide to contribute to the codebase, ensure that you are using an up-to-date master branch. The latest development version will always be there, including the documentation (powered by sphinx).

Full docs are available at: https://gospl.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html.