Can setting mask=0 or 1 control which grids participate in the operation?

[LiwenWu]

Dear Scientists,
I want to run a regional SP case using my own land use , LAI and soil data. Therefore, I used the default raw data of CLM to generate surface file for the regional case, and then modified certain variables into my own data, such as PCT_CROP, PCT_URBAN, PCT_SAND, MONTHLY_LAI. Now I have substituted the surface data into the model and run it (using version CTSM-ctsm5.2.005).
But I have doubt that my own data only includes Shanxi Province (a province in China), so it is not a regular rectangle. To meet the requirements of CLM, I define all data outside of Shanxi Province as 0. I only want to obtain the output results of Shaanxi Province, but since CLM considers horizontal processes, I believe that these 0 values will affect the output of the model. Can I define the variable mask=0 in the domain file of the surface or elementMask=1 in mask_mesh.nc to prevent grids outside Shaanxi Province from participating in model operations? Although these grids are not truly ocean.
Could you please give me some advice? Thank you.

 

[slevis]

@LiwenWu I am pretty sure that you can do that and it's worth trying it. You will be able to tell if it worked when you look at an output file.

 

[erik]

Moving to the land forum.