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BIO130 · Human Impacts Module

Biomagnification Simulator

Model how chemical contaminants concentrate through marine food chains — and discover why being a top predator is a toxic liability.
Human Impacts Interactive Lab
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Key Concepts: Bioaccumulation vs. Biomagnification

Bioaccumulation occurs within a single organism — it takes in a contaminant faster than it can excrete it, so the chemical accumulates in its tissues over its lifetime. Biomagnification occurs across trophic levels — each predator eats many prey organisms, concentrating the contaminant load further. A predator that eats 10,000 contaminated prey retains nearly all the chemical from all of them in its own much smaller body mass. The result is exponential concentration up the food chain.

// Simulation Controls
0.0001 ppb (background)0.01 ppb (polluted)
2× (low persistence)20× (POPs like DDT)
// Marine Food Chain — Concentration at Each Trophic Level
💧
Seawater
Abiotic Environment
—
ppb
baseline
→
🌿
Phytoplankton
Producer (Trophic Level 1)
—
ppb
—
→
🦐
Zooplankton
Primary Consumer (TL 2)
—
ppb
—
→
🐟
Small Fish
Secondary Consumer (TL 3)
—
ppb
—
→
🐬
Large Fish / Dolphin
Tertiary Consumer (TL 4)
—
ppb
—
→
🦅
Apex Predator / Human
Top Consumer (TL 5)
—
ppb
—
// Simulation Analysis
Guided Exploration: Run the simulation with the default settings first. Then use the Scenario Presets to compare outcomes. Notice how changing the BMF has a much greater effect on apex predator concentrations than changing the starting water concentration. This is the key insight of biomagnification — the top of the food chain is exponentially more sensitive to pollution levels than the bottom.