Modelling of Aquatic Ecosystems

ETH Zurich, Prof. Peter Reichert

(Yearly; first time summer semester 2006)

Next course FS 2012
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 2012 (in German)
  
  
• Hints regarding the exam (in German)
  

Libraries:

ECOSIM library, ODE library (used by ECOSIM)
STOICHCALC library

Exercises:

Exercise1:
Exercise 1, R script for exercise 1, Data set, Solution exercise 1, R Reference Card

Exercise2:
Exercise 2, R script for exercise 2, Solution exercise 2 (R-File), Solution exercise 2 (Plots), Introduction exercise 2 (ppt-Slides)

Exercise3:
Exercise 3, R script for exercise 3, Solution exercise 3 (R-File), Solution exercise 3 (ppt-Slides), Introduction exercise 3 (ppt-slides)

Exercise4:
Exercise 4, R script for exercise 4, Solution exercise 4 (Plots), Introduction/Solution exercise 4 (ppt-Slides)

Exercise5:
Exercise 5, R script for exercise 5, Solution exercise 5 (Plots), Introduction/Solution exercise 5 (ppt-Slides)

Exercise6:
Exercise 6, R script for exercise 6, Solution exercise 6.1/6.2 (Plots), Solution exercise 6.3/6.4 (Plots), Introduction/Solution exercise 6 (ppt-Slides), Solution exercise 6.4 (Excel-Sheet)

Exercise7:
Exercise 7, R script for exercise model 7a, R script for exercise model 7b, Solution exercise 7 (Plots), Solution exercise 7b (R-File), Introduction/Solution exercise 7 (ppt-Slides)