Usage Guide¶

Overview¶

This guide explains how to use the ARIS-lite package to compute plant stress indicators from modelling the soil water balance using meteorological data.

Main Components¶

ARIS-lite consists of the following modules:

• water_budget.py: Handles soil water balance calculations

• phenology.py: Implements phenological models

• yield_expectation.py: Calculates crop yield expectations

Basic Usage¶

To use ARIS-lite, you can either:

1. Use the command-line interfaces (CLIs) provided by the package

2. Import and use the functions programmatically

In any case, first make sure your data is organized in Zarr stores with the correct variable names and with the correct units. The list below may be incomplete - in that case, refer to the source code. If not specified, the variables correspond to daily aggregates at 2 m above the surface, with temperatures in degC.

• air_temperature: Average air temperature

• max_air_temp: Maximum air temperature

• min_air_temp: Minimum air temperature

• rel_humidity: Average relative humidity in %

• min_rel_hum: Minimum relative humidity in %

• precipitation: Total precipitation in mm water equivalent

• wind_speed: Wind speed in m/s 10 m above the surface

• pot_evapotransp: Average potential evapotranspiration in mm water equivalent

Command-Line Usage¶

The canonical CLI is now rooted at aris.

For in-memory runs on smaller datasets, use:

aris 1go "winter wheat" "maize" input.zarr output.zarr

For yearly staged processing, use aris calc subcommands:

aris calc waterbudget --mode snow 2026 2027 2028
aris calc pheno 2026 2027 2028
aris calc waterbudget --mode soil 2026 2027 2028
aris calc yield --mode both 2026 2027 2028 \
  --yield-max PATH --yield-intercept PATH --yield-params PATH

Path conventions for staged calculations default to ../data and can be changed with --base-dir.

Legacy command migration¶

Deprecation policy¶

Legacy flat commands and legacy high-level module-level functions (main* and cli aliases) remain available in 0.3.x, emit deprecation warnings, and will be removed in 0.4.0.

API Usage¶

You can also use ARIS-lite in your own Python routines. After installation, you can:

from aris_lite import phenology, water_budget, yield_expectation

Troubleshooting¶

If you get stuck, please file issues on GitHub.