One of the effective measures to cope with eutrophication of lake waters is to remove nutrient
substances that can cause to algal blooming, by taking advantage of the natural capability of water
purification. Here the term 'purification' is defined, in a wide sense, as a potential role of the lake
contributing to reduction of pollutants and thus restraint to eutrophication; in which various pro
cesses concerning seasonal nutrient fixation such as uptake by aquatic plants, attachment to foli
age substrates and feeding by organisms of higher-trophic level are regarded as biological purifi
cation processes together with eternal losses or removals from waters. In order to evaluate the
purification capacity, a numerical lake ecosystem model was developed highlighting on the role
of macrophyte colonies that inhabit alongshore, and applied to Lakes Suwa, Kasumi, Biwa and
five attached sublakes of Lake Biwa.
The model takes account of the biological interactions between pelagic compartments (phytoand
zooplankton, detritus, dissolved organic matter, pelagic fish and nutrients) and benthic com
partments (macrophytes, attached algae, attached small animals, macro- and megalobenthos and
demersal fish). Under the time-dependent conditions of meteorological and hydraulic factors, the
model was run over a year to evaluate annual nutrient budget and purification capacity of each
lake. The results revealed that the purification capacity is generally estimated, from the stand
points of both stock and flux, higherin the shoreregion than in the offshoreregion becauseof a
wide variety of organisms including aquatic plants. Moreover,it almost increases in proportion to
vegetation densityof the shoreregion.Nutrientfluxes associatedwith purificationprocessesturned
out closely related to surfacearea or equivalently to retentiontime of lake waters,suggestingthat
the biological purificationdoes not becomedominantagainst physical turnoveruntil the surface
area reaches around 103 ha or the retention time exceeds around 10^2 days.
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