Eutrophication: A Mathematical Model

This report constitutes the Master of Science thesis of the same title completed by the author in May, 1973, and accepted by the Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering. It is the result of a joint research project on "Decision analysis of watershed management alternatives," supported in part by the United States Department of the Interior, Office of Water Resources Research, as authorized under the Water Resources Research Act of 1964.Various approaches to modeling phytoplanktonzooplankton- nutrient interactions have been investigated. A stochastic birth- death model was developed to describe changes in phytoplankton and zooplankton population levels at a given point. Tuie stochastic birth -death model was combined with a deterministic mass balance of limiting nutrient concentration to form an over -all system theoretic model that enables one to use Monte Carlo simulation to study the problem of eutrophication. A comparison made between this modeling approach and the standard differential equation approach suggested that further investigation was desirable, particularly in the area of model calibration.This work was supported by a matching grant project entitled "Decision Analysis of Watershed Management Alternatives" from the Office of Water Resources Research of the United States Department of Interior. The author wishes to thank Professors Lucien Duckstein, Chester Kisiel, and Martin Fogel for their help and encouragement in this endeavor, and Lorne Everett for sharing his limnological expertise.This title from the Hydrology & Water Resources Technical Reports collection is made available by the Department of Hydrology & Atmospheric Sciences and the University Libraries, University of Arizona. If you have questions about titles in this collection, please contact repository@u.library.arizona.edu