Research Product

Theories of bacterial population dynamics are well developed and models exist for simple laboratory systems. However, quantitative extrapolation to the field has not been demonstrated. A necessary first step in the development of a risk assessment framework is the development and testing of a modeling framework to describe bacterial population dynamics in natural aquatic systems. It is the purpose of our cooperative agreement to formulate and test a framework for predicting bacterial population density in natural aquatic systems. At this point our work has been restricted to natural populations and has focused on bacterial growth kinetics and the relationship between bacteria and phytoplankton.