Virtual Prairie - Revision history

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	; Using BOINC-computed data		; Using BOINC-computed data
	* Cendrine Mony, Marc Garbey, Malek Smaoui, Marie-Lise Benot. "Large scale parameter study of an individual-based model of clonal plant with volunteer computing." ''Ecological Modelling'', vol. 222, no. 4, 2011, pp. 935–946. {{doi\|10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2010.10.014}}<ref name="ecolmodel2011" />		* Cendrine Mony, Marc Garbey, Malek Smaoui, Marie-Lise Benot. "Large scale parameter study of an individual-based model of clonal plant with volunteer computing." ''Ecological Modelling'', vol. 222, no. 4, 2011, pp. 935–946. {{doi\|10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2010.10.014}}<ref name="ecolmodel2011" />
	* Malek Smaoui, Marc Garbey. "Parallel Genetic Algorithm Implementation for BOINC." ''Parallel Computing: From Multicores and GPU's to Petascale'', vol. 19, IOS Press, 2010, pp. 212–219 (Proceedings of the International Conference on Parallel Computing, ParCo, 1–4 September 2009, Lyon, France).<ref name="parco2009" />		* Malek Smaoui, Marc Garbey. "[https://web.archive.org/web/20100724031842/http://vcsc.cs.uh.edu/virtual-prairie/pages_site_aurelie/ParCo09Smaoui_Garbey.pdf Parallel Genetic Algorithm Implementation for BOINC.]" ''Parallel Computing: From Multicores and GPU's to Petascale'', vol. 19, IOS Press, 2010, pp. 212–219 (Proceedings of the International Conference on Parallel Computing, ParCo, 1–4 September 2009, Lyon, France).<ref name="parco2009" />
	* Malek Smaoui, Marc Garbey, Cendrine Mony. "Virtual Prairie: Going green with volunteer computing." ''Proceedings of the IEEE Asia-Pacific Services Computing Conference'' (APSCC), 9–12 December 2008, Yilan, Taiwan, pp. 427–434.<ref name="apscc2008">{{cite conference \|authors=Malek Smaoui, Marc Garbey, Cendrine Mony \|title=Virtual Prairie: Going green with volunteer computing \|booktitle=Proceedings of the IEEE Asia-Pacific Services Computing Conference \|pages=427–434 \|date=2008 \|conference=APSCC, 9–12 December 2008, Yilan, Taiwan}}</ref>		* Malek Smaoui, Marc Garbey, Cendrine Mony. "[https://www.academia.edu/75230011/Virtual_Prairie_Going_Green_with_Volunteer_Computing Virtual Prairie: Going green with volunteer computing.]" ''Proceedings of the IEEE Asia-Pacific Services Computing Conference'' (APSCC), 9–12 December 2008, Yilan, Taiwan, pp. 427–434.<ref name="apscc2008">{{cite conference \|authors=Malek Smaoui, Marc Garbey, Cendrine Mony \|title=Virtual Prairie: Going green with volunteer computing \|booktitle=Proceedings of the IEEE Asia-Pacific Services Computing Conference \|pages=427–434 \|date=2008 \|conference=APSCC, 9–12 December 2008, Yilan, Taiwan}}</ref>
	* Marc Garbey, Cendrine Mony, Malek Smaoui. "Fluid flow, agent based hybrid model for the simulation of virtual prairies." ''Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering'', vol. 74, part 10, 2011, pp. 369–376 (Proceedings of the Parallel Computational Fluid Dynamics Conference, ParCFD, 18–22 May 2008, Lyon, France).<ref name="parcfd2008">{{cite conference \|authors=Marc Garbey, Cendrine Mony, Malek Smaoui \|title=Fluid flow, agent based hybrid model for the simulation of virtual prairies \|booktitle=Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering \|volume=74 \|pages=369–376 \|date=2011 \|conference=Parallel Computational Fluid Dynamics Conference (ParCFD), 18–22 May 2008, Lyon, France}}</ref>		* Marc Garbey, Cendrine Mony, Malek Smaoui. "[https://web.archive.org/web/20110830131424/http://vcsc.cs.uh.edu/virtual-prairie/pages_site_aurelie/ParCFD4.pdf Fluid flow, agent based hybrid model for the simulation of virtual prairies.]" ''Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering'', vol. 74, part 10, 2011, pp. 369–376 (Proceedings of the Parallel Computational Fluid Dynamics Conference, ParCFD, 18–22 May 2008, Lyon, France).<ref name="parcfd2008">{{cite conference \|authors=Marc Garbey, Cendrine Mony, Malek Smaoui \|title=Fluid flow, agent based hybrid model for the simulation of virtual prairies \|booktitle=Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering \|volume=74 \|pages=369–376 \|date=2011 \|conference=Parallel Computational Fluid Dynamics Conference (ParCFD), 18–22 May 2008, Lyon, France}}</ref>

	; Other project-related publications		; Other project-related publications
	* Marc Garbey, Malek Smaoui, Waree Rinsurongkawong, Cendrine Mony. "The Virtual Prairie Project." Invited plenary lecture, 2nd International Conference on Parallel, Distributed, Grid and Cloud Computing for Engineering, Ajaccio, Corsica, April 2011, Civil-Comp Press.<ref name="civilcomp2011">{{cite conference \|authors=Marc Garbey, Malek Smaoui, Waree Rinsurongkawong, Cendrine Mony \|title=The Virtual Prairie Project \|booktitle=2nd International Conference on Parallel, Distributed, Grid and Cloud Computing for Engineering \|publisher=Civil-Comp Press \|date=April 2011 \|conference=Ajaccio, Corsica}}</ref>		* Marc Garbey, Malek Smaoui, Waree Rinsurongkawong, Cendrine Mony. "The Virtual Prairie Project." Invited plenary lecture, 2nd International Conference on Parallel, Distributed, Grid and Cloud Computing for Engineering, Ajaccio, Corsica, April 2011, Civil-Comp Press.<ref name="civilcomp2011">{{cite conference \|authors=Marc Garbey, Malek Smaoui, Waree Rinsurongkawong, Cendrine Mony \|title=The Virtual Prairie Project \|booktitle=2nd International Conference on Parallel, Distributed, Grid and Cloud Computing for Engineering \|publisher=Civil-Comp Press \|date=April 2011 \|conference=Ajaccio, Corsica}}</ref>
	* Cendrine Mony, Marc Garbey. "Updates on the Virtual Prairie Project." 5th Pan-Galactic BOINC Workshop, 22–23 October 2009, Barcelona, Spain.<ref name="workshop2009">{{cite conference \|authors=Cendrine Mony, Marc Garbey \|title=Updates on the Virtual Prairie Project \|conference=5th Pan-Galactic BOINC Workshop, 22–23 October 2009, Barcelona, Spain}}</ref>		* Cendrine Mony, Marc Garbey. "[https://web.archive.org/web/20100724032022/http://vcsc.cs.uh.edu/virtual-prairie/pages_site_aurelie/Boinc_workshop_Marc_Garbey_2.pdf Updates on the Virtual Prairie Project.]" 5th Pan-Galactic BOINC Workshop, 22–23 October 2009, Barcelona, Spain.<ref name="workshop2009">{{cite conference \|authors=Cendrine Mony, Marc Garbey \|title=Updates on the Virtual Prairie Project \|conference=5th Pan-Galactic BOINC Workshop, 22–23 October 2009, Barcelona, Spain}}</ref>
	* Marc Garbey. "Virtual Prairies with BOINC." 4th Pan-Galactic BOINC Workshop, 11–12 September 2008, INRIA, Grenoble, France.<ref name="workshop2008">{{cite conference \|authors=Marc Garbey \|title=Virtual Prairies with BOINC \|conference=4th Pan-Galactic BOINC Workshop, 11–12 September 2008, INRIA, Grenoble, France}}</ref>		* Marc Garbey. "[https://web.archive.org/web/20100724031558/http://vcsc.cs.uh.edu/virtual-prairie/pages_site_aurelie/Grenoble.pdf Virtual Prairies with BOINC.]" 4th Pan-Galactic BOINC Workshop, 11–12 September 2008, INRIA, Grenoble, France.<ref name="workshop2008">{{cite conference \|authors=Marc Garbey \|title=Virtual Prairies with BOINC \|conference=4th Pan-Galactic BOINC Workshop, 11–12 September 2008, INRIA, Grenoble, France}}</ref>
	* Cendrine Mony, Marc Garbey, Malek Smaoui. "Using modelling to understand clonal strategies in optimal growing conditions." 51st Annual Symposium of the International Association for Vegetation Science, 7–12 September 2008, South Africa.<ref name="iavs2008">{{cite conference \|authors=Cendrine Mony, Marc Garbey, Malek Smaoui \|title=Using modelling to understand clonal strategies in optimal growing conditions \|conference=51st Annual Symposium of the International Association for Vegetation Science, 7–12 September 2008, South Africa}}</ref>		* Cendrine Mony, Marc Garbey, Malek Smaoui. "Using modelling to understand clonal strategies in optimal growing conditions." 51st Annual Symposium of the International Association for Vegetation Science, 7–12 September 2008, South Africa.<ref name="iavs2008">{{cite conference \|authors=Cendrine Mony, Marc Garbey, Malek Smaoui \|title=Using modelling to understand clonal strategies in optimal growing conditions \|conference=51st Annual Symposium of the International Association for Vegetation Science, 7–12 September 2008, South Africa}}</ref>

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{{Infobox software
| name = Virtual Prairie
| logo =
| logo caption =
| screenshot =
| caption =
| description = Virtual Prairie (ViP) was a completed BOINC volunteer computing project run by the University of Houston and the University of Rennes 1 that used individual-based simulations of clonal plant growth to inform the ecological design of sustainable prairie ecosystems.
| status = Completed
| category = Ecology
| compute = CPU
| dependencies = None
| developer = University of Houston Department of Computer Science; University of Rennes 1 (UMR CNRS ECOBIO)
| author = Marc Garbey, Cendrine Mony
| sponsor = [[wikipedia:Agence Nationale de la Recherche|Agence Nationale de la Recherche]] (ANR), [[wikipedia:Centre national de la recherche scientifique|CNRS]], Cemagref, [[wikipedia:French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation|INRIA]]
| maintainer =
| released = 2008
| completed = 2011
| discontinued =
| repository =
| programming language =
| operating system =
| size =
| stats as of =
| average performance =
| active users =
| total users =
| active hosts =
| total hosts =
| rac =
| credit per day =
| gpu performance =
| cpu performance =
| website = {{URL|http://vcsc.cs.uh.edu/virtual-prairie/}} (defunct)
| license =
}}

'''Virtual Prairie''' (also referred to as '''ViP''') was a completed [[BOINC]] [[wikipedia:volunteer computing|volunteer computing]] project that studied the ecology of [[wikipedia:prairie|prairie]] and [[wikipedia:grassland|grassland]] ecosystems through large-scale individual-based simulation of [[wikipedia:clonal colony|clonal plant]] growth.<ref name="uh2009">{{cite web |authors=University of Houston |title=Virtual Prairie Project With Garbey as PI Taking Off |url=https://www.uh.edu/nsm/computer-science/news-events/stories/2009/0422_garbey_02.php |website=University of Houston |date=22 April 2009 |access-date=26 July 2026}}</ref> The project was jointly led by Professor Marc Garbey of the [[wikipedia:University of Houston|University of Houston]] Department of Computer Science and Assistant Professor Cendrine Mony of the [[wikipedia:University of Rennes 1|University of Rennes 1]], and combined high-performance computing with BOINC-based volunteer computing to model how agricultural and land-management practices affect plant competition and genetic structure within prairies.<ref name="sicortex2009">{{cite press release |authors=SiCortex, Inc. |title=Leading International Universities Use SiCortex Computers to Protect Prairial Systems |date=17 February 2009 |location=Maynard, Massachusetts}}</ref>

The project's goal was to help design new grassland systems that balance water purification, biodiversity conservation, and carbon storage.<ref name="sicortex2009" /> At the time it was described by its organizers as the world's largest ecological simulation.<ref name="sicortex2009" />

[[File:Restored tallgrass prairie in DuPage County, Illinois.jpg|thumb|right|Prairie grassland ecosystems, like this restored tallgrass prairie in Illinois, provide ecological services such as water purification, biodiversity support, and carbon storage that the Virtual Prairie project sought to help optimize.]]

== Background ==
Environmental policy developments of the 2000s, including the European [[wikipedia:Common Agricultural Policy|Common Agricultural Policy]] reforms of 2005 and France's Grenelle Environment Forum of 2007, focused new attention on the ecological services provided by grassland ecosystems, particularly the availability of unpolluted fresh water and the regulation of carbon emissions.<ref name="uh2009" /> Natural prairies had historically been studied mainly for their agricultural productivity, but researchers increasingly sought to understand and reproduce their broader ecological functions, including nitrate pollution remediation, erosion prevention, and habitat stability for vulnerable species.<ref name="uh2011">{{cite web |authors=University of Houston |title=Protecting Ecosystems, Pollution Remediation Goals of Research at UH |url=https://www.uh.edu/nsm/news-events/stories/2011/0307_ecosystems.php |website=University of Houston |date=7 March 2011 |access-date=26 July 2026}}</ref>

Virtual Prairie approached this problem computationally: since a prairie is a complex system with emergent properties arising from the interaction of many individual plants, the project's researchers built an [[wikipedia:individual-based model|individual-based model]] (IBM), sometimes described as an [[wikipedia:agent-based model|agent-based model]], to simulate the growth of clonal plants at the level of individual ramets (the repeated modular units of a clonal plant network) and to test which combinations of plant traits and management strategies produced the best ecological outcomes.<ref name="ecolmodel2011" />

== Research design and computational methods ==

=== Individual-based clonal plant model ===
The core simulation, referred to in publications as the CLONAL model, represented a clonal plant as a network of interconnected ramets that could share and store resources.<ref name="ecolmodel2011">{{cite journal |authors=Cendrine Mony, Marc Garbey, Malek Smaoui, Marie-Lise Benot |title=Large scale parameter study of an individual-based model of clonal plant with volunteer computing |journal=Ecological Modelling |volume=222 |issue=4 |pages=935–946 |date=2011 |doi=10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2010.10.014}}</ref> The model incorporated nine growth rules governing metabolic processes, plant architecture, and resource sharing and storage, controlled by nineteen input parameters.<ref name="researchgate-smaoui">{{cite web |authors=Malek Smaoui |title=Research works (profile excerpt discussing the CLONAL model parameter study) |url=https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Malek-Smaoui-74531876 |website=ResearchGate |access-date=26 July 2026}}</ref>

Rather than testing only a small, expert-selected subset of parameter combinations, as was typical in earlier ecological modelling literature, the project's researchers chose two to four candidate values for each of the nineteen parameters and tested essentially all resulting combinations, an approach only made tractable through volunteer computing:<ref name="researchgate-smaoui" />

<math>N = \prod_{i=1}^{19} k_i \approx 2 \times 10^{7}</math>

where <math>k_i</math> is the number of candidate values tested for parameter <math>i</math>. Sources close to the project reported the resulting simulation count slightly differently depending on the run being described, with the February 2009 project press release citing more than 22 million completed simulations in the first phase of the project<ref name="sicortex2009" /> and the project's 2011 journal paper describing roughly 20 million parameter combinations tested overall.<ref name="researchgate-smaoui" />

=== Two-phase simulation strategy ===
The project ran in two broad phases. In the first phase, researchers modeled individual plant space colonization through clonal reproduction to generate initial hypotheses about competitive strategies between plant types; this phase alone produced more than 22 million simulation runs and found that prairie growth was best explained not by a single dominant strategy but by a small number of distinct viable strategies.<ref name="sicortex2009" /> The second, more ambitious phase aimed to run thousands of combinations of plant types together in a single master simulation across an entire growing season, in order to identify optimal species combinations for long-term prairie sustainability under varying conditions.<ref name="sicortex2009" />

To manage the scale of the second phase, the team developed a parallel multi-objective [[wikipedia:genetic algorithm|genetic algorithm]] (PGA) that could run on top of BOINC to fine-tune the optimization process, described in a 2009 conference paper by PhD student Malek Smaoui and Garbey.<ref name="parco2009">{{cite conference |authors=Malek Smaoui, Marc Garbey |title=Parallel Genetic Algorithm Implementation for BOINC |booktitle=Parallel Computing: From Multicores and GPU's to Petascale |volume=19 |pages=212–219 |publisher=IOS Press |date=2010 |conference=International Conference on Parallel Computing (ParCo), 1–4 September 2009, Lyon, France}}</ref>

=== Computing infrastructure ===
[[File:UH Science and Engineering Research and Classroom Complex.jpg|thumb|right|The University of Houston, whose Department of Computer Science and Research Computing Center hosted Virtual Prairie's local computing infrastructure.]]

Early, computationally intensive runs used local high-performance computing (HPC) hardware at the University of Houston. The department's third such system, provided by [[wikipedia:SiCortex|SiCortex]], was a single-cabinet 2.1 [[wikipedia:FLOPS|TFLOPS]] cluster built around 648 [[wikipedia:64-bit computing|64-bit]] processors, acquired as a joint venture between the university's Department of Computer Science and its Research Computing Center (RCC).<ref name="sicortex2009" /> SiCortex, which marketed itself on the energy efficiency of its systems, ceased operations in May 2009, a few months after this system was highlighted in connection with the project.<ref name="sicortex-shutdown">{{cite web |authors=HPCwire staff |title=SiCortex Meets an Untimely End |url=https://www.hpcwire.com/2009/05/28/sicortex_meets_an_untimely_end/ |website=HPCwire |date=28 May 2009 |access-date=26 July 2026}}</ref>

[[File:Beaulieu 1 Université de Rennes.JPG|thumb|left|The Beaulieu campus of the University of Rennes 1 in France, home to the UMR CNRS ECOBIO laboratory that led the project's ecological modelling work.]]

For the larger, second-phase master simulations, the project moved to BOINC-based volunteer computing, distributing work to home and lab computers around the world.<ref name="parco2009" /> By 2011, the university reported that more than 10,000 volunteers in 90 countries had contributed computing time to the project.<ref name="uh2011" /> The project's BOINC application was hosted at {{URL|http://vcsc.cs.uh.edu/virtual-prairie/}}, run as a Virtual Campus Supercomputing Center (VCSC) project of the University of Houston.<ref name="vcsc-wiki">{{cite web |authors=BOINC project |title=VirtualCampusSupercomputerCenter |url=https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/wiki/VirtualCampusSupercomputerCenter |website=BOINC wiki (GitHub) |access-date=26 July 2026}}</ref>

== Project team ==
Virtual Prairie was a joint effort between two university research groups:
* At the University of Houston, principal investigator Marc Garbey, chair of the Department of Computer Science, worked with PhD students Malek Smaoui, who focused on volunteer computing, evolutionary algorithms, and Monte Carlo methods, and Waree Rinsurongkawong, who worked on parallel data mining methods.<ref name="uh2009" /><ref name="sciencedirect-smaoui">{{cite web |authors=ScienceDirect |title=Improving volunteer computing scheduling for evolutionary algorithms (author biography excerpt) |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167739X12000921 |website=ScienceDirect |access-date=26 July 2026}}</ref> Multicore and software optimization researcher [[wikipedia:Barbara Chapman (computer scientist)|Barbara Chapman]] also contributed to the project's computing infrastructure work.<ref name="sicortex2009" />
* At the University of Rennes 1, Cendrine Mony led a team that included Professor Bernard Clement and PhD candidates Marie-Lise Benot and Anne-Kristel Bittebiere.<ref name="uh2011" /> Benot later became a post-doctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Alpine Ecology in Grenoble, France.<ref name="uh2011" />

== Funding ==
The project was funded by several French national research agencies, including the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR, under grant ANR-08-SYSC-012), the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Cemagref (the Institute for Research in Science and Technology for the Environment, later merged into [[wikipedia:Irstea|Irstea]]), and INRIA (the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control).<ref name="uh2009" /><ref name="uh2011" /><ref name="anr-grant">{{cite web |authors=BOINC message boards |title=Virtual Prairie results published (forum thread quoting ANR-08-SYSC-012 grant acknowledgement) |url=https://boinc.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=6607 |website=BOINC |date=June 2011 |access-date=26 July 2026}}</ref>

== Results and publications impact ==
The project's central ecological finding, drawn from its large-scale parameter study, was that high plant performance in prairie conditions was reached through several distinct combinations of traits, such as high metabolic gain paired with low resource storage, or short branch spacing, rather than through a single optimal strategy.<ref name="researchgate-smaoui" /> Interactive effects between more than half of the tested input parameters were also demonstrated, providing a level of insight into clonal plant growth strategies that the researchers argued would not have been feasible without volunteer computing.<ref name="researchgate-smaoui" />

== Current status ==
Virtual Prairie's BOINC servers stopped issuing new work sometime around mid-2011, shortly after the project's main results were published in ''Ecological Modelling''; a project administrator confirmed on the BOINC message boards in June 2011 that the servers appeared to have gone silent.<ref name="anr-grant" /> The project's original website, vcsc.cs.uh.edu, no longer hosts Virtual Prairie content.<ref name="surly">{{cite web |title=vcsc.cs.uh.edu site scan |url=https://sur.ly/i/vcsc.cs.uh.edu/ |website=Sur.ly |access-date=26 July 2026}}</ref> The BOINC project maintains an entry for Virtual Prairie in its historical list of retired projects.<ref name="boinc-oldprojects">{{cite web |authors=BOINC |title=old_projects.inc |url=https://github.com/BOINC/boinc-site/blob/master/old_projects.inc |website=GitHub |access-date=26 July 2026}}</ref>

== Publications ==
The project produced the following peer-reviewed and conference publications, drawn from the project's archived publications page:<ref name="vip-pubs">{{cite web |title=Virtual Prairie: Publications (archived) |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130528055610/http://vcsc.cs.uh.edu/virtual-prairie/ |website=Wayback Machine |access-date=26 July 2026}}</ref>

; Using BOINC-computed data
* Cendrine Mony, Marc Garbey, Malek Smaoui, Marie-Lise Benot. "Large scale parameter study of an individual-based model of clonal plant with volunteer computing." ''Ecological Modelling'', vol. 222, no. 4, 2011, pp. 935–946. {{doi|10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2010.10.014}}<ref name="ecolmodel2011" />
* Malek Smaoui, Marc Garbey. "Parallel Genetic Algorithm Implementation for BOINC." ''Parallel Computing: From Multicores and GPU's to Petascale'', vol. 19, IOS Press, 2010, pp. 212–219 (Proceedings of the International Conference on Parallel Computing, ParCo, 1–4 September 2009, Lyon, France).<ref name="parco2009" />
* Malek Smaoui, Marc Garbey, Cendrine Mony. "Virtual Prairie: Going green with volunteer computing." ''Proceedings of the IEEE Asia-Pacific Services Computing Conference'' (APSCC), 9–12 December 2008, Yilan, Taiwan, pp. 427–434.<ref name="apscc2008">{{cite conference |authors=Malek Smaoui, Marc Garbey, Cendrine Mony |title=Virtual Prairie: Going green with volunteer computing |booktitle=Proceedings of the IEEE Asia-Pacific Services Computing Conference |pages=427–434 |date=2008 |conference=APSCC, 9–12 December 2008, Yilan, Taiwan}}</ref>
* Marc Garbey, Cendrine Mony, Malek Smaoui. "Fluid flow, agent based hybrid model for the simulation of virtual prairies." ''Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering'', vol. 74, part 10, 2011, pp. 369–376 (Proceedings of the Parallel Computational Fluid Dynamics Conference, ParCFD, 18–22 May 2008, Lyon, France).<ref name="parcfd2008">{{cite conference |authors=Marc Garbey, Cendrine Mony, Malek Smaoui |title=Fluid flow, agent based hybrid model for the simulation of virtual prairies |booktitle=Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering |volume=74 |pages=369–376 |date=2011 |conference=Parallel Computational Fluid Dynamics Conference (ParCFD), 18–22 May 2008, Lyon, France}}</ref>

; Other project-related publications
* Marc Garbey, Malek Smaoui, Waree Rinsurongkawong, Cendrine Mony. "The Virtual Prairie Project." Invited plenary lecture, 2nd International Conference on Parallel, Distributed, Grid and Cloud Computing for Engineering, Ajaccio, Corsica, April 2011, Civil-Comp Press.<ref name="civilcomp2011">{{cite conference |authors=Marc Garbey, Malek Smaoui, Waree Rinsurongkawong, Cendrine Mony |title=The Virtual Prairie Project |booktitle=2nd International Conference on Parallel, Distributed, Grid and Cloud Computing for Engineering |publisher=Civil-Comp Press |date=April 2011 |conference=Ajaccio, Corsica}}</ref>
* Cendrine Mony, Marc Garbey. "Updates on the Virtual Prairie Project." 5th Pan-Galactic BOINC Workshop, 22–23 October 2009, Barcelona, Spain.<ref name="workshop2009">{{cite conference |authors=Cendrine Mony, Marc Garbey |title=Updates on the Virtual Prairie Project |conference=5th Pan-Galactic BOINC Workshop, 22–23 October 2009, Barcelona, Spain}}</ref>
* Marc Garbey. "Virtual Prairies with BOINC." 4th Pan-Galactic BOINC Workshop, 11–12 September 2008, INRIA, Grenoble, France.<ref name="workshop2008">{{cite conference |authors=Marc Garbey |title=Virtual Prairies with BOINC |conference=4th Pan-Galactic BOINC Workshop, 11–12 September 2008, INRIA, Grenoble, France}}</ref>
* Cendrine Mony, Marc Garbey, Malek Smaoui. "Using modelling to understand clonal strategies in optimal growing conditions." 51st Annual Symposium of the International Association for Vegetation Science, 7–12 September 2008, South Africa.<ref name="iavs2008">{{cite conference |authors=Cendrine Mony, Marc Garbey, Malek Smaoui |title=Using modelling to understand clonal strategies in optimal growing conditions |conference=51st Annual Symposium of the International Association for Vegetation Science, 7–12 September 2008, South Africa}}</ref>

Archived copies of several of these papers and a related workshop video are held via the Wayback Machine on the project's former publications page.<ref name="vip-pubs" />

== See also ==
* [[BOINC]]

== External links ==
* {{URL|http://vcsc.cs.uh.edu/virtual-prairie/|Virtual Prairie project website (defunct)}}
* {{URL|https://web.archive.org/web/20130528055610/http://vcsc.cs.uh.edu/virtual-prairie/|Archived Virtual Prairie website}}

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

[[Category:Completed BOINC projects]]
[[Category:Ecology]]
[[Category:Volunteer computing]]