Large scale systems approach to estuarine water quality modelling with multiple constituents

A matrix model for simulating concentration distributions of water quality constituents with coupled reactions in an estuary is developed from a large scale systems approach. The model is an approximation to the set of coupled partial differential equations describing the process. This steady state approximation is formulated as a large algebraic system consisting of coupled subsystems. The large algebraic system is solved by an efficient iterative method. Results utilizing actual field data are presented for the nitrogen cyle with five constituent forms of nitrogen for Corpus Christi Bay, Texas. Simulated and observed concentrations are compared.