Understanding the Biogeochemical Impacts of Fish Farms Using a Benthic-Pelagic Model

An assessment of approaches and techniques for estimating water pollution releases from aquaculture production facilities

The rapid expansion of the aquaculture industry raises concerns about water pollution from aquaculture production facilities (APFs). APFs release pollutants, including fish feed and feces, threatening the environment. The United Nations has introduced regulatory tools like the National Baseline Budget of pollutants (NBB) and Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTRs) to monitor pollution. However, these tools lack specific capabilities for estimating aquaculture-related pollution, especially from mariculture non-point sources (NPS). The United Nations Programme for the Assessment and Control of Marine Pollution in the Mediterranean (UNEP/MAP) stresses the need for an inventory and guidance document. Our comprehensive literature review focused on (1) NPS discharges of specific pollutants from APFs, (2) methods for estimating potential pollution releases from aquaculture, and (3) compiling information into a guidance document summarizing estimation methods. The geographical coverage of our study includes Europe, Australia, the USA, Canada, and East/Southeast Asia.

Sufficient Conditions for the Existence and Uniqueness of the Solution of the Dynamics of Biogeochemical Cycles in Coastal Systems Problem

The article considers a three-dimensional mathematical model of population dynamics based on a system of non-stationary parabolic advection-diffusion-reaction equations with lower derivatives describing the advective motion of the aquatic environment and non-linear source functions. In contrast to the previous authors’ works devoted to the description of this model and its numerical implementation, this article presents the results of an analytical study of the initial-boundary value problem corresponding to this model. For these purposes, the original initial-boundary value problem is linearized on a single time grid—for all nonlinear sources, their final spatial distributions for the previous time step are used. As a result, a chain of initial-boundary value problems is obtained, connected by initial—final data at each step of the time grid. For this chain of linearized problems, the existence and uniqueness of the solution of the initial-boundary value problem for the system of partial differential equations in the Hilbert space were researched. Numerical experiments were performed for model problems of the main types of phytoplankton populations in coastal systems under the influence of dynamically changing biotic and abiotic factors, the results of which are consistent with real physical experiments. The developed model, including the proposed model of biological kinetics, allows for the study of the productive and destructive processes of the shallow water body biocenosis to assess the state of the processes of reproduction of valuable and commercial fish participating in the food chain with selected species of summer phytoplankton.

Mathematical Modeling of the Phytoplankton Populations Geographic Dynamics for Possible Scenarios of Changes in the Azov Sea Hydrological Regime

Increased influence of abiotic and anthropogenic factors on the ecological state of coastal systems leads to uncontrollable changes in the overall ecosystem. This paper considers the crucial problem of studying the effect of an increase in the water’s salinity in the Azov Sea and the Taganrog Bay on hydrobiological processes. The main aim of the research is the diagnostic and predictive modeling of the geographic dynamics of the general phytoplankton populations. A mathematical model that describes the dynamics of three types of phytoplankton is proposed, considering the influence of salinity and nutrients on algae development. Discretization is carried out based on a linear combination of Upwind Leapfrog difference schemes and a central difference scheme, which makes it possible to increase the accuracy of solving the biological kinetics problem at large values of the grid Péclet number (Peh > 2). A software package has been developed that implements interrelated models of hydrodynamics and biogeochemical cycles. A modified alternating-triangular method was used to solve large-dimensional systems of linear algebraic equations (SLAE). Based on the scenario approach, several numerical experiments were carried out to simulate the dynamics of the main species of phytoplankton populations at different levels of water salinity in coastal systems. It is shown that with an increase in the salinity of waters, the habitats of phytoplankton populations shift, and marine species invasively replace freshwater species of algae.

Modelling the Influence from Biota and Organic Matter on the Transport Dynamics of Microplastics in the Water Column and Bottom Sediments in the Oslo Fjord

The fate of microplastics (MP) in seawater is heavily influenced by the biota: the density of MP particles can be changed due to biofouling, which affects sinking, or MP can be digested by zooplankton and transferred into fecal pellets with increased sinking rate. We hypothesize that seasonal production and degradation of organic matter, and corresponding changes in the plankton ecosystem affect the MP capacity for transportation and burying in sediments in different seasons. This is simulated with a coupled hydrodynamical-biogeochemical model that provides a baseline scenario of the seasonal changes in the planktonic ecosystem and changes in the availability of particulate and dissolved organic matter. In this work, we use a biogeochemical model OxyDep that simulates seasonal changes of phytoplankton (PHY), zooplankton (HET), dissolved organic matter (DOM) and detritus (POM). A specifically designed MP module considers MP particles as free particles (MPfree), particles with biofouling (MPbiof), particles consumed by zooplankton (MPhet) and particles in detritus, including fecal pellets (MPdet). A 2D coupled benthic-pelagic vertical transport model 2DBP was applied to study the effect of seasonality on lateral transport of MP and its burying in the sediments. OxyDep and MP modules were coupled with 2DBP using Framework for Aquatic Biogeochemical Modelling (FABM). A depletion of MP from the surface water and acceleration of MP burying in summer period compared to the winter was simulated numerically. The calculations confirm the observations that the “biological pump” can be one of the important drivers controlling the quantity and the distribution of MP in the water column.