Home▸Ecology & Conservation Biology▸Phytoplankton Bloom Simulator

🦠 Phytoplankton Bloom Dynamics

Interactive 3D ocean water column where adjusting nutrient input, light penetration and grazer population lets users watch a simulated phytoplankton bloom rise, peak and crash.

Ecology & Conservation Biology3DModerate60 FPS💧 Water

A 3D ocean water column split into depth layers, each running a simplified nutrient–phytoplankton–zooplankton model so a bloom's rise, peak and crash can be watched forming in real time.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Phytoplankton growth is capped by whichever is scarcer, light or nutrients, at each depth. Nutrient upwelling fuels growth, grazing zooplankton with a saturating response can trigger a bloom crash, and clearer water lets light — and growth — reach deeper layers.

🎮 How to Use

Raise nutrient input to fuel a bloom, adjust water clarity to control how deep light penetrates, and dial grazer population up to watch predation cap or crash the bloom. Reset to restart from a pre-bloom baseline.

💡 Did You Know?

Large spring diatom blooms are visible from orbit as swirling green-blue patches in satellite chlorophyll maps, and can strip a water column of nearly all dissolved nitrate within a few weeks.

⚙ Under the hood

Interactive 3D ocean-surface scene where tuning nutrient upwelling, sunlight and grazing pressure shows how phytoplankton populations bloom and then crash.

phytoplanktonalgal-bloomsmarine-ecologynutrient-cyclingocean-productivitypopulation-dynamicsecology

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install