Fuzzy logic model to estimate seasonal pseudo steady state chlorophyll-a concentrations in reservoirs

A fuzzy logic model is developed to estimate pseudo steady state chlorophyll-a concentrations in a very large and deep dam reservoir, namely Keban Dam Reservoir, which is also highly spatial and temporal variable. The estimation power of the developed fuzzy logic model was tested by comparing its performance with that from the classical multiple regression model. The data include chlorophyll-a concentrations in Keban lake as a response variable, as well as several water quality variables such as PO4 phosphorus, NO3 nitrogen, alkalinity, suspended solids concentration, pH, water temperature, electrical conductivity, dissolved oxygen concentration and Secchi depth as independent environmental variables. Because of the complex nature of the studied water body, as well as non-significant functional relationships among the water quality variables to the chlorophyll-a concentration, an initial analysis is conducted to select the most important variables that can be used in estimating the chlorophyll-a concentrations within the studied water body. Following the outcomes from this initial analysis, the fuzzy logic model is developed to estimate the chlorophyll-a concentrations and the advantages of this new model is demonstrated in model fitting over the traditional multiple regression method.