Observer design for open and closed trophic chains

Monitoring of ecological systems is one of the major issues in ecosystem research. The concepts and methodology of mathematical systems theory provide useful tools to face this problem. In many cases, state monitoring of a complex ecological system consists in observation (measurement) of certain state variables, and the whole state process has to be determined from the observed data. The solution proposed in the paper is the design of an observer system, which makes it possible to approximately recover the state process from its partial observation. Such systems-theoretical approach has been applied before by the authors to Lotka–Volterra type population systems. In the present paper this methodology is extended to a non-Lotka–Volterra type trophic chain of resource–producer–primary consumer type and numerical examples for different observation situations are also presented.