Ecological modelling
HR Wallingford has been helping clients address engineering challenges related to the aquatic environment for over 50 years. We understand the additional complexity and uncertainty around modelling living things in the aquatic environment.
Practically all aquatic life lives for at least some part of its life completely at the mercy of currents. As animals grow they develop independent movement, swimming or anchorage, but currents continue to dominate aquatic lives, from providing food directly, to linking ecosystems and providing pathways for long distance migrants. We build reliable hydrodynamic models of water and sediment based on the laws of physics using well established methods. However, we need alternative techniques to model aquatic creatures’ behaviour and physical adaptations which are based on the theory of evolution.
Our ecological modelling techniques can address:
- larval advection (spatial recruitment to fisheries, assessment of the value of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), impact of development on recruitment)
- individual based models of birds and fish (shorebird response to changes in intertidal habitat, fish survival in hydropower schemes, school fidelity in turbulence, impact of structures on fluvial, estuarine and marine ecology)
- complex system biological modelling (saltmarsh development and response to change, sand wave and small scale bed form modelling, benthic community dynamics after disturbance)
Model fish movements in an harbour with the simplest possible set of basic rules - Click to view video in new window
Example of numerical modelling output - Click to view video in new window
Example of numerical modelling output - Click to view video in new window
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