Chaos in eco-epidemiological problem of the Salton Sea and its possible control

The Salton Sea, which is located in the southeast desert of California, came into the limelight due to deaths of fish and fish catching birds on a massive scale. Recently, Chattopadhyay and Bairagi [J. Chattopadhyay, N. Bairagi, Pelicans at risk in Salton Sea - an eco-epidemiological model, Ecol. Model. 136 (2001) 103-112] proposed and analysed an eco-epidemiological model on Salton Sea. In the present paper, we modified their model by taking into account the bilinear mass action incidence rate and performed extensive numerical simulations. Our studies show that the system exhibits chaotic dynamics when some key parameters attain their critical values. We have tried to explain the unusual deaths of fish and fish eating birds in the Salton Sea using the simulation results. We have also suggested some possible measures to avoid chaos in such natural systems. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.