Modeling Complex Wetland Systems

This chapter focuses on the self-organizing map (SOM) model, which was applied to predict outflow nutrient concentrations for ICW treating farmyard runoff. The SOM showed that the outflow ammonia-nitrogen concentrations were strongly correlated with water temperature and salt concentrations, indicating that ammonia-nitrogen removal is effective as low salt concentrations and comparatively high temperatures in ICW. The SRP removal was predominantly affected by salt and dissolved oxygen concentrations. In addition, pH and temperature were weakly correlated with SRP removal, suggesting that SRP was easily removed within ICW if salt concentrations were low and dissolved oxygen, temperature, and pH values were high. The SOM model performed very well in predicting the nutrient concentrations with water quality variables such as temperature, conductivity, and dissolved oxygen, which can be measured cost-effectively. The results indicate that the SOM model was an appropriate approach to monitor wastewater treatment processes in ICW.