Wetland Modeling Frameworks
From BioMASS Laboratory Wiki
Abstract for 2007 ASABE conference in Minnesota
Development of a STELLA framework to model microbial communities in humic lakes in Wisconsin
The study of microbial community dynamics involves monitoring and controlling the composition of the microbial community (MCC). The MCC is affected by climatic, meteorological, physical and chemical changes in the lake ecosystem. Some of these changes could be developed, not only by the ecosystem forces of the lakes, but also by anthropogenic disturbances and global change issues. For example nutrients in effluents flowing into the lakes, increase in the acidity of the lakes, etc. Even though several issues in lakes ecosystems have already been widely researched, there is a severe lack of knowledge in the area of microbial community dynamics. Very little is known about the changes in composition over annual time scales due to the interaction of the community with ecological factors. Much has been researched about the individual microbes residing in the lake ecosystems but few have studied them as a community and there have been even fewer attempts to model them as a community. We would ultimately like to predict the behavior of the microbial communities in these lakes over different time scales, so that we could employ the community to control ecosystem processes such as de-nitrification. Such predictions could also help shape environmental policies and management decisions related to lake ecosystems. However, our short term goal is to develop a model in STELLA using data obtained from 6 Wisconsin lakes over several years. This model will predict the change in the MCC for one lake over a year, given initial composition, chemical and physical data of the lake and meteorological data of the region. We intend to validate this model from its predictions of the composition over subsequent years. We would also like to use the same basic model with few embellishments to simulate the microbial community dynamics in the other lakes.
