Lake Trophic Cascade: Biomanipulation & Water Clarity

Real lake-management agencies fight algal blooms not just by cutting phosphorus at the source, but by re-engineering the food web itself: stocking predatory fish so they eat down the small fish that would otherwise devour the zooplankton that graze the algae. This simulator models that four-level chain — piscivores, planktivores, zooplankton and phytoplankton — with real logistic-growth and saturating-predation equations, then renders it as a living 3D lake where population counts drive the number of swimming fish and drifting plankton particles you can see, and the water itself clouds or clears in real time as algal biomass rises and falls. Drag the piscivore-stocking slider to run a biomanipulation, raise nutrient loading to fight it with a bottom-up bloom, and watch the cascade strength and Secchi-depth readouts track exactly how the intervention propagates down the chain.