REU Student Publication: Sensitivity of a biogeochemical model to the formulation of oyster filtration

Year:

2019

Source:

Ecological Modeling, 403: 70-84, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2019.04.003

Abstract:

Oysters directly impact water quality through filter feeding and have been extensively studied due to the potential ecological benefits of population restoration. Numerical models have been developed that simulate the environmental impact of oysters on estimating current water quality conditions and evaluating prospective restoration strategies. Accurately representing oyster filtration in these models is essential to their value as management tools. However, the formulation of filtration in response to environmental variables differs between models. Here we compare different formulations for filtration for the eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) from several studies (Cerco and Noel, 2005; Fulford et al., 2007; North et al., 2010; Ehrich and Harris, 2015), which use functions of temperature, salinity, and suspended solids concentration (TSS) to limit filtration rate. Using outputs from a water quality model with controlled forcing conditions we investigated how sensitive model output can be to the environmental limitation functions used. We found that due to feedback between TSS and filtration rate, the choice of TSS function caused significant variation in the model output beyond the scale of the differences in the functions themselves. From our results and a theoretical understanding of model construction, we discuss the implications for the accuracy of water quality models with oyster filtration and provide recommendations for future modeling efforts.

Mentors:

Raleigh Hood, Ph.D.

Students:

Isaac Keohane, Duke University