APPROXIMATION AND PARAMETER-ESTIMATION PROBLEMS FOR ALGAL AGGREGATIONMODELS

Aggregation processes are intrinsic to many biological phenomena inclu ding sedimentation and coagulation of algae during bloom periods. A fu ndamental but unresolved problem associated with aggregate processes i s the determination of the ''stickiness function,'' a measure of the a bility of particles to adhere to other particles. This leads to an inv erse problem associated with a claw of nonlinear integro-differential equations. The purpose of this article is to develop convergence theor y for this algal coagulation model utilizing a spline-based collocatio n scheme within the context of the parameter identification problem.