Modelling the dynamics of phytoplankton with the needs of the end user in mind

How to regulate phytoplankton growth in water supply reservoirs has continued to occupy managers and strategists for some fifty years or so, now, and mathematical models have always featured in their design and operational constraints. In recent years, rather more sophisticated simulation models have begun to be available and these, ideally, purport to provide the manager with improved forecasting of plankton blooms, the likely species and the sort of decision support that might permit management choices to be selected with increased confidence. This account describes the adaptation and application of one such model, PROTECH (Phytoplankton RespOnses To Environmental CHange) to the problems of plankton growth in reservoirs. This article supposes no background knowledge of the main algal types; neither does it attempt to catalogue the problems that their abundance may cause in lakes and reservoirs.

Bioenergetics of the freshwater prosobranch Idiopoma angularis Muller in Laguna de Bay

This study was made as an attempt to investigate some of the ecological aspects of the freshwater snail Idiopoma angularis Muller in a modern framework of energy flow and mathematical models. It offers the first investigation of respiration (as related to temperature and body size), production (growth), and excretion in the prosobranch I. angularis in Laguna Lake.