Computer Simulation of Marine-Organism Community Environments: ABSTRACT

Abstract

Computers can be used to re-create the behavior of ancient marine-organism communities with surprising effectiveness. Organism communities and their environments have been represented symbolically in a three-dimensional mathematical model embodied as a series of computer programs for IBM 7090/7094 computers. Factors affecting environmental conditions, such as depth of water, distance from shore, water turbulence, deposition of sediment, and salinity, can be adjusted by changing the numbers fed into the End_Page 616------------------------------ computer, thus regulating the model. By advancing the model through increments of geologic time, the response of the organism communities can be observed. This approach provides an experimental means of dealing with problems in which experimentation has, heretofore, been largely or wholly closed. The model may be used by initially populating the sea floor with organism communities whose behavior is to be studied. Each community is assigned certain properties which affect its response to different water depths, presence of mud and sand, and other environmental factors. These properties can be finely adjusted so that the communities behave more or less like their actual ancient counterparts, competing with each other and adapting to changing conditions. The adjustments can be made on a trial-and-error basis until satisfactory results, as determined by comparison with observed distribution of fossils, are obtained. Recent work with the model has dealt with environmental responses of leaf-like calcareous algae of the late Paleozoic. These algae were widespread in shallow Pennsylvanian and Early Permian seas, locally creating thickened banks or reefs. Today, some of these algal deposits serve as large oil reservoirs in southeastern Utah, northern Oklahoma, and West Texas. Exploration for these reservoirs will be enhanced if the environmental response of the organisms that created them can be determined experimentally and this knowledge used effectively in an exploration program. End_of_Article - Last_Page 617------------