Changes in habitat of fish populations: An inverse problem

Mathematical modelling applies to a wide variety of application areas, and is an active area of research in many disciplines. It is often the case that accurate depiction of real-world phenomena require increasingly complex models. Unfortunately, this increased complexity in a model causes great difficulty when seeking solutions. What is more, developing a model with known parameters that produces results consistent with observed behaviors may prove to be a difficult or even impossible task. These difficulties have brought about an interest in inverse problems. In this paper we utilize a collage-based approach to solve an inverse problem for a model for the migration of three fish species through floodplain waters. A derivation of the mathematical model is presented and a generalized collage method is discussed and applied to this model to recover diffusion parameters. Theoretical and numerical particulars are discussed and results are presented.