Modelling of Aquatic Ecosystems

ETH Zurich, Prof. Peter Reichert

(Yearly; first time summer semester 2006)

Next course FS 2013
held by Prof. Peter Reichert,

exercises supervised by Dr. Colombe Siegenthaler-Le Drian and David Machac

Goals:

• Learn to build-up a models of aquatic ecosystems that consider the most important biological, biogeochemical, chemical and physical processes.
  
• Learn to understand the interactions between these processes and the resulting model (and system) behaviour.
  
• Learn to implement and apply these models.

Contents:

• Basic concepts:
  Principles of modelling environmental systems, formulation of mass balance equations, formulation of transformation processes.
• Formulation of ecosystems processes:
  Physical processes (transport and mixing, sedimentation, gas exchange, detachment and resuspension), chemical processes (chemical equilibria, sorption), biological processes (primary production, respiration, death, consumption, mineralization, nitrification, hydrolysis, bacterial growth, colonization).
• Didactic models of aquatic ecosystems:
  Lake phytoplankton model, lake phyto- and zooplankton model, two box oxygen and phosphorus lake model, model of biogeochemical cycles in a lake, oxygen and nutrient household model of a river, benthic population model of a river.
• Research models of aquatic ecosystems:
  Research lake models, research river models.
• Exercises implementing and practicing the application of the didactic models using libraries of the program package for statistical computing and graphics R (http://www.r-project.org).

Literature:

• Chapra, S.C., Surface Water Quality Modeling, McGraw-Hill, 1996
• Williams, B.J., Hydrobiological Modelling, University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia, 2006. http://www.lulu.com.

Downloads:

• Program FS 2013 (in German)
• Manuscript

Lectures:

• Lecture 1 (20.2.2013): Slides
• Lecture 2 (13.3.2013): Slides
• Lecture 3 (20.3.2013): Slides

Exercises:

• Exercise 1 (27.2.2013): Tasks, R source code (exercise_01.r), exercise_01_data.dat, solution exercise 1
• Exercise 2 (06.03.2013): Tasks, R source code (exercise_02.r), solutions exercise 2 (R script), solutions exercise 2 (figures)