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Environmental Modeling 101: Training Module

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Overview

Environmental Modeling 101

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses a variety of models to inform decisions that support its mission of protecting human health and safeguarding the natural environment — air, water, and land — upon which life depends.

This module has four main objectives:

  1. Provide a basic introduction to environmental modeling
  2. Define the and categories of environmental models
  3. Explain how and why models are used in environmental sciences
  4. Introduce the model "life-cycle"

Question Icon What is a model?

According to the EPA (2009a) a model is defined as:

"A simplification of reality that is constructed to gain insights into select attributes of a physical, biological, economic, or social system. A formal representation of the behavior of system processes, often in mathematical or statistical terms. The basis can also be physical or conceptual."

Image of overview of models: connecting the real world to a formula

Models are representations of the environment that can be used to inform regulation or management decisions.