On Growth and Form: NSF Proposal Workspace

This repository is organized as a working space for an NSF FIRE-MODEL proposal on fire, growth, and form. It combines proposal writing, funder guidance, literature management, simulations, figures, and a lightweight project website.

Repository layout

• funder/: official materials, requirement summaries, and funder-facing research guides for the FIRE call.
• background_context/: scientific framing, contextualization, and synthesis that support proposal argumentation.
  • program_briefings/: program-specific context notes
  • intellectual_foundations/: broader conceptual grounding
  • scaling_and_geometry/: scaling, fractal, diffusion, and wildfire-geometry notes
  • systems_frameworks/: event-based and data-system architecture notes
  • research_programs/: proposal-shaping research agendas and narrative work plans
• proposal/: proposal narrative and supporting components such as budget text, biosketches, and plans.
  • proposal/narrative/: active strategy, integration, and proposal-framing documents
• citations/: tracked citation notes and exports, plus a local pdfs/ folder for article PDFs that is ignored by Git.
• simulations/: scripts, configs, and generated model outputs for analysis supporting the proposal.
• figures/: source assets plus draft and final figure outputs.
• docs/: MkDocs website content documenting the proposal workflow and project status.

Recommended workflow

1. Put sponsor documents in funder/.
2. Store paper PDFs in citations/pdfs/ and keep structured notes in citations/notes/.
3. Run exploratory models from simulations/scripts/ with reusable parameter files in simulations/config/.
4. Build visuals from figures/source/ and publish candidate outputs to figures/drafts/ or figures/final/.
5. Keep the website in docs/ synchronized with proposal milestones and repository structure.

Current solicitation anchor

The repository is currently oriented around the 2026 NSF FIRE-MODEL cycle described in:

• funder/solicitation/fire_model_2026_briefing.md
• funder/review_criteria/fire_model_requirements_checklist.md
• background_context/program_briefings/fire_model_2026_background.md
• background_context/intellectual_foundations/on_growth_and_form_intellectual_overview.md
• background_context/scaling_and_geometry/diffusion_across_space_half_scaling_signature.md
• background_context/scaling_and_geometry/non_half_scaling_signatures_spatial_spread.md
• background_context/scaling_and_geometry/scaling_dimensionality_power_laws_wildfire_science.md
• background_context/scaling_and_geometry/superdiffusive_scaling_fractal_geometry_wildfire_perimeter_growth.md
• background_context/scaling_and_geometry/fire_modeling_frameworks_scaling_perspectives.md
• background_context/scaling_and_geometry/wildfire_scaling_regime_hypothesis.md
• background_context/scaling_and_geometry/wildfire_scaling_open_questions_hypotheses_empirical_tests.md
• background_context/systems_frameworks/environmental_data_science_stack_2030.md
• background_context/systems_frameworks/fired_cubedynamics_event_based_earth_system_analysis.md
• background_context/research_programs/wildfire_scaling_research_program_work_plan.md
• background_context/research_programs/wildfire_scaling_rationale_deliverables_users_impact.md

The funder/ files are the working home for funder-oriented material and requirement tracking. The background_context/ files are interpretive notes used to frame the proposal scientifically.

Website

The site is built from docs/ and can be served locally with MkDocs.

pip install -r requirements.txt
mkdocs serve

Then open http://127.0.0.1:8000.

Website checks

The repository includes Playwright-based smoke tests for the built MkDocs site. These tests are intended to catch broken pages, failed asset loads, browser-side errors, and obvious navigation regressions before a pull request fails.

pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
python -m playwright install chromium
bash scripts/review_site.sh

The GitHub workflow runs these checks automatically when website-related files change. The deploy workflow also runs the same validation before publishing to GitHub Pages.

Git behavior

• citations/pdfs/ is ignored so article libraries do not get committed.
• Generated outputs in simulations/results/, simulations/logs/, figures/drafts/, and figures/final/ are ignored by default.
• Keep durable source material, notes, configs, and scripts tracked in Git.