Estimation of trophic states in warm tropical lakes and reservoirs of Latin America by using GPSS simulation

Abstract

This paper proposes a stochastic simulation model to determine the boundaries of the trophic states of warm-water tropical lakes and reservoirs in Latin America based on statistical correlation and MonteCarlo techniques. The model was developed using GPSS as a discrete simulation language and calibrated by correlating a set of state variables of 27 Latin American lakes and reservoirs monitored by the Pan American Center of Sanitary Engineering and Environmental Sciences (CEPIS). In order to warrant a better stability in the resultant probabilistic behavior of the dependent variable, 10000 new virtual water bodies with different trophic states were generated to produce a trophic state index based on the total phosphorus concentration. Based on the obtained results, it is concluded that the applied methodology is appropriate to determine the boundaries of the trophic states of warm-water tropical lakes and reservoirs and is also able to generate results similar to those obtained using the existing applied estimation techniques. © 2006 Asociación Interciencia.