A biogeochemical model reproduces chemical and biological
structure and dynamics. Having characterized the lake’s
geochemistry and identified groups of spatially correlated
organisms, we set out to design a computational framework that
predicts the function of bacteria in the lake. We found no existing
dynamical model that treated all the major microbial metabolic
processes in a dimictic lake, so we modified and reinterpreted a
model of chemical transport and microbial metabolism designed
to simulate groundwater aquifers22. We chose to develop a model
because the distribution of bacteria is the result of complex and
interdependent biogeochemical cycles and hydrodynamic
transport processes in the lake.
The model we developed simulates the major chemical species,
redox cycles and transport processes in the hypolimnion
(Supplementary Fig. 5 and Supplementary Tables 1–3).We used previously
published values22 for many parameters (Supplementary
Table 4) and calibrated the model to match the chemical data sets