A study of plankton dynamics under osmotic stress in the Senegal River Estuary, West Africa, using a 3D mechanistic model

M. Baklouti, C. Chevalier, M. Bouvy, D. Corbin, M. Pagano, M. Troussellier and R. Arfi

Ecological Modelling, 2011, vol. 222, issue 15, 2704-2721

Abstract: This paper presents the outline of an estuary modeling study encompassing a study of the biogeochemical model on its own. It includes a preliminary validation of the new mechanistic features using mesocosm data, and a study of a coupled physical and biogeochemical model of the Senegal River Estuary (SRE) from flood to low-water conditions. The originality of this work is that it distinguishes the marine and freshwater origins of some of the organisms modeled and includes additional mortality terms owing to the osmotic stress experienced by the freshwater organisms. The mechanistic model implemented in the Eco3M modelling tool, and partially designed for this study, succeeded in representing the dynamics of the planktonic food web in two mesocosm experiments and in the SRE under very different conditions using a single set of model parameters. Among the important results, it reveals that distinguishing between marine and freshwater origins provides substantial additional information on the distribution of organisms along the estuary. Finally, failure to take account of the osmotic stress and the origin of the organisms can give rise to substantial errors in the calculation of the biomass in the SRE.

Keywords: Coupled physical–biogeochemical model; Mechanistic process model; Osmotic stress; Senegal River Estuary (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380011002596
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:222:y:2011:i:15:p:2704-2721

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2011.04.028

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Modelling is currently edited by Brian D. Fath

More articles in Ecological Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().