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Excessive predation pressure from the waterfowl Phalacrocorax carbo (Great Cormorant) on Plecoglossus altivelis (Ayu) has recently been a severe problem of river environment in Japan. Local fishery cooperatives are currently suffering from economic difficulties due to decrease of the fish catch of P. altivelis. Local fishery cooperatives and municipalities have been enthusiastically trying to develop countermeasures that can effectively reduce the predation pressure; however, their effectiveness and efficiency have not been systematically quantified well. This aim can be achieved with the help of an appropriate mathematical model. In this paper, based on a pure death process, a practical stochastic control model for population dynamics of released P. altivelis in river environment under predation pressure from P. carbo, harvesting by human, and environmental fluctuations is proposed. Finding an optimal management strategy ultimately reduces to solving a 2D Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation, which is performed with a finite element scheme. Its application to a Japanese river environment successfully computes the optimal management strategy that is consistent with the reality. Numerical sensitivity analysis of the presented mathematical model is also performed for comprehension of dependence of the optimal strategy on the model parameters.

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SUMMARY A numerical model is developed for shallow water equation in locally 1‐D channel networks. The model concurrently uses the standard Galerkin finite element method for the continuity equation and the finite volume method with an upwind scheme for the momentum equation. The surface gradient method is consistently employed. A minimum treatment is given for channel junctions so that application to multiply connected channels do not require any special consideration The model is capable of computing different types of transcritical flows, wet and dry flows, and flows with complex source terms. Standardized test problems and laboratory experimental data are used for verifying the model. Applicability of the models is validated in a multiply connected channel network draining hydromorphic farmlands located in a West African savanna, and Manning's roughness coefficient is identified, so that the steady solution is consistent with field observations. Unsteady simulation demonstrates that the model is capable of stably reproducing shifts of hydraulic jumps in flows of sub‐millimeter water depths. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Inland valleys of West Africa are strategic in terms of food security and poverty alleviation, but scientific studies on hydrologic processes happening in these environments have not been well documented. Modeling approaches presented in this paper are an attempt to comprehend better hydraulic phenomena occurring in inland valleys. An inland valley situated in Northern Region of Ghana is set as the study site. The inland valley comprises well-drained uplands and hydromorphic valley bottoms. There are several earthen dams across the valley bottoms, which are at the same time seasonal wetlands cultivated to rice during the rainy season. A finite volume model for the shallow water equations is developed to numerically simulate surface runoff flows in the valley bottoms during flood events. Innovation is necessitated to handle a series of different hydraulic phenomena. Flux splitting and data reconstruction techniques are used to achieve stable computation in the complex topography of the valley bottoms. Standard problems of oblique hydraulic jump and dam break flows are used to test the accuracy of the numerical model. The Manning's roughness coefficient is determined from calibration in another Ghanaian watershed located in Eastern Region. Using actually observed time series data of rainfall intensity, surface flows during the rainfall events are simulated in the computational domain representing the valley bottoms of the study area. Observed data of water levels in the dams are compared with predictions, and discrepancies between them are examined from the hydrological point of view. In the case of a hypothetical flood event, cascading collapses of the dams and flooding of cultivated fields are reproduced.