A nifty paper on nonlinear dynamics of salmon populations caught my eye on ArXiv.org today. The math is straightforward and elegant, so I replicated the model in Vensim.
A three-species model explaining cyclic dominance of pacific salmon
Authors: Christian Guill, Barbara Drossel, Wolfram Just, Eddy Carmack
Abstract: The four-year oscillations of the number of spawning sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) that return to their native stream within the Fraser River basin in Canada are a striking example of population oscillations. The period of the oscillation corresponds to the dominant generation time of these fish. Various – not fully convincing – explanations for these oscillations have been proposed, including stochastic influences, depensatory fishing, or genetic effects. Here, we show that the oscillations can be explained as a stable dynamical attractor of the population dynamics, resulting from a strong resonance near a Neimark Sacker bifurcation. This explains not only the long-term persistence of these oscillations, but also reproduces correctly the empirical sequence of salmon abundance within one period of the oscillations. Furthermore, it explains the observation that these oscillations occur only in sockeye stocks originating from large oligotrophic lakes, and that they are usually not observed in salmon species that have a longer generation time.
The paper does a nice job of connecting behavior to structure, and of relating the emergence of oscillations to eigenvalues in the linearized system.
Units balance, though I had to add a couple implicit scale factors to do so.
The general results are qualitatitively replicable. I haven’t tried to precisely reproduce the authors’ bifurcation diagram and other experiments, in part because I couldn’t find a precise specification of numerical methods used (time step, integration method), so I wouldn’t expect to succeed.
Unlike most SD models, this is a hybrid discrete-continuous system. Salmon, predator and zooplankton populations evolve continuously during a growing season, but with discrete transitions between seasons.
The model uses SAMPLE IF TRUE, so you need an advanced version of Vensim to run it, or the free Model Reader. (It should be possible to replace the SAMPLE IF TRUE if an enterprising person wanted a PLE version). It would also be a good candidate for an application of SHIFT IF TRUE if someone wanted to experiment with the cohort age structure.
For a more policy-oriented take on salmon, check out Andy Ford’s work on smolt migration.
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