Ecology II: Engineering for Sustainability

The objective of this problem is to allocate agricultural water to maximize profits, subject to environmental constraints.

In this problem set you will be simulating particulate emissions from a single vehicle moving along a straight road with a cross wind. You will develop a particle tracking model to visualize the particulate plume and to compute atmospheric concentrations.

This problem set is designed to give you some practice with MATLAB programming. You should develop your own programs rather than modify those handed out in class. The programming problems given here are based on simplified versions of the Exam 1 problems.

In this problem set you will be evaluating the energy performance of a house using a MATLAB model you construct. Your model will include heat gains and losses from heat conduction, convection, and radiation as well as heat gains from a thermostatically controlled furnace. You will be examining the effect of changing windows, and other structural components.

This problem builds on the class lectures about predator-prey ecosytems. Rather than predation, we consider two similar species competing for a common resource. We use the Lotka-Volterra competition model, which embodies the “competitive exclusion” principle:

"If two competing species coexist in the same niche in a stable environment then one species will eventually crowd out the other.”

Modeling activity for the course Ecology II: Engineering for Sustainability.