Research Interest

My aim in "Ecological Modeling of Marine Ecosystems" is to develop and test hypotheses about the functioning of marine ecosystems. The main focus is the pelagic ecosystem of the North Sea and the North Atlantic, and the coupling between them. Simulation models of the main pathways of matter are developed and tested in relation to observations. Research objectives are: 

• Functioning of the North Sea / North Atlantic ecosystem

The State-of-the-art in modelling the marine ecosystem of the greater North Sea is reviewed, providing an overview especially about three-dimensional  models that describe and predict how the marine ecosystem  of the greater North Sea area functions and how concentrations and fluxes of biologically important elements vary in space and time, throughout the shelf and over years, in response to physical forcing.  

The review of biogeochemical/ecological modelling for the greater North Sea shows that important findings by model simulations have either confirmed existing knowledge derived from field work or have given new insight into the mechanisms of the funcioning of the North Sea system: 

- the temporal and spatial development and magnitude of primary production,

- its spreading from the coasts to the north-west over the open North Sea, 

- its mechanisms of limitation,

- the functioning of the pelagic small food web and of the benthic web, 

- the mechanisms of nutrient regeneration, 

- the effects of rivering and atmospheric nutrient inputs causing eutrophication of coastal waters,

- the extent of eutrophication in the North Sea, and

- the budgets for nitrogen, phosphorus, and silicon. 

The state-of-the-art in validation for these models is presented in part 2.

            Fig.: A. Moll / G. Radach / Progress in Oceanography 57 (2003) 175-217

• Mass budgets for nitrogen, phosphorus, silicon and carbon taking into account external forcings, river and atmospheric input, biogeochemical transfer and pelagic-benthic exchange processes 
• Exchange of matter between shelf sea / deep ocean / coastal zone / atmosphere
• Population dynamics of zooplankton / Individual Based Modelling of fish larvae 
• Evaluation of measures of coastal zone management 
• Data organisation / project data management