document the 'habitatTypeExitConditionHours' feature

CONFIG_README.md

@@ -73,6 +73,7 @@ Parameters:
             Distributary nodes retrieve flow speed, depth, and temperature from their nearest hydro node, so these nodes should be relatively dense spatially in distributary regions.
 
         - `blindChannelSimplificationRadius`: float; the maximum distance between blind channel nodes that will result in them being merged when the map data is loaded (to speed up model prediction)
+        - `habitatTypeExitConditionHours`: float; optional, default 2.0; the number of consecutive hours a fish must reside in a Nearshore habitat (at the end of each hour) after which it will "exit" the simulation.  
     - if `envDataType` is "sim", the following entries are expected:
         - `mapParams`: A subgroup of parameters containing the following keys:
             - `m`: int, the number of distributary nodes per grid row/column

RELEASE_NOTES.md

@@ -4,6 +4,12 @@ This file records major feature changes. It goes back in time as far as 11.19.20
 when the completed feature was merged to the main branch. Functional parts of a feature may have been merged earlier.
 Minor updates are not recorded.
 
+## 12.17.2024
+- added configuration to .json input file to control the length of nearshore residences before exiting. Specifically:
+  - `habitatTypeExitConditionHours`: float; optional, default 2.0; the number of consecutive hours a fish must reside 
+    in a Nearshore habitat (at the end of each hour) after which it will "exit" the simulation. 
+    See [default_config_env_from_file.json](default_config_env_from_file.json) for an example usage.
+
 ## 11.26.2024
 
 - `pmaxHistory` is included in the tagged history output files.

default_config_env_from_file.json

@@ -15,5 +15,6 @@
     "flowSpeedFile": "data/flow_condensed.nc",
     "distribWseTempFile": "data/wse.temp.full.nc",
     "threadCount": -1,
-    "blindChannelSimplificationRadius": 15.0
+    "blindChannelSimplificationRadius": 15.0,
+    "habitatTypeExitConditionHours": 2.0
 }