Qualitative modelling of limiting factors for a salmon life cycle in the context of sustainable river rehabilitation

This paper describes aspects of a Qualitative Reasoning (QR) model which was developed as part of the EU funded NaturNet-Redime (NNR) project (Sixth Framework Program, Project no. 004074 http://www.naturnet.org ). This project contributed to the European Union’s Strategy for Sustainable Development [European Commission 2001] in the context that the NNR project revolved around developing new technologies (of which QR is one example) for use within a general educational setting, for exploration of sustainable development issues. One of the goals of the NNR project was to improve the Garp3 QR software tool and to construct guidelines for a standardised approach to QR modelling [Bredeweg et al. 2007]. The model presented here was developed following this standardised modelling approach and focused on the representation of a species life cycle within the context of river rehabilitation programmes. As such the case study addresses the issues of sustainability of aquatic resource management, an issue that is currently of great concern in the European Union.