Date Thesis Awarded
5-2010
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
Mathematics
Advisor
Junping Shi
Committee Members
Rex K. Kincaid
Romuald Lipcius
Jian Shen
Leah B. Shaw
Abstract
The Chesapeake May oyster has been the focus of more than a century of heavy harvesting and now several decades of restoration attempts. Concerted efforts to rebuild the native oyster population and reef structure have yielded similar results. Recent success in the Great Wicomico River suggests that initial reef height combats growth retarding sedimentation resulting in multiple stable states of reefs. We use a system of three differential equations to model volumes of live oysters, dead oysters, and sediment. We show that multiple nonnegative equilibria exist for an ecologically reasonable range of parameters and the initial height of oyster reefs determines which equilibrium is reached.
Recommended Citation
Jordan-Cooley, William Crowell, "Bistability in Differential Equation Model of Oyster Population and Sediment Volume" (2010). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 748.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/748
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Comments
Thesis is part of Honors ETD pilot project, 2008-2013. Migrated from Dspace in 2016.