Modeling transport and vertical mixing of microplastic in Lake Erie

Session: Microplastics in Freshwater Systems: Advances in Chemistry, Biology and Physics (1)

Matthew Hoffman, Rochester Inst. of Technology, School of Mathematical Sci., [email protected]
Juliette Daily, Rochester Institute of Technology , [email protected]

Abstract

It has been estimated that only a small fraction of plastic pollution contained in large bodies of water resides in the surface water. As much knowledge on the plastic pollution is based on sampling at the surface, there is still a great deal of uncertainty about the distributions of plastics below the surface. In this talk we will discuss efforts to build a three-dimensional Lagrangian transport model based on NOAA’s newest FVCOM model. In addition to advection, a module is being implemented to include vertical mixing and account for non-neutrally buoyant particles. We apply this model to Lake Erie and utilize it to make a first pass estimate of plastic particles in the benthic region