Incorporating terrain specific beaching within a lagrangian transport plastics model for Lake Erie

Daily, Juliette; Onink, Victor; Jongedijk, Cleo E.; Laufkötter, Charlotte; Hoffman, Matthew J. (2021). Incorporating terrain specific beaching within a lagrangian transport plastics model for Lake Erie. Microplastics and Nanoplastics, 1(1) Springer 10.1186/s43591-021-00019-7

Preview

Text Daily2021_Article_IncorporatingTerrainSpecificBe.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY). Download (2MB) | Preview

Mass estimates of plastic pollution in the Great Lakes based on surface samples differ by orders of magnitude from what is predicted by production and input rates. It has been theorized that a potential location of this missing plastic is on beaches and in nearshore water. We incorporate a terrain dependent beaching model to an existing hydrodynamic model for Lake Erie which includes three dimensional advection, turbulent mixing, density driven sinking, and deposition into the sediment. When examining parameter choices, in all simulations the majority of plastic in the lake is beached, potentially identifying a reservoir holding a large percentage of the lake’s plastic which in previous studies has not been taken into account. The absolute amount of beached plastic is dependent on the parameter choices. We also find beached plastic does not accumulate homogeneously through the lake, with eastern regions of the lake, especially those downstream of population centers, most likely to be impacted. This effort constitutes a step towards identifying sinks of missing plastic in large bodies of water.

Interest & Impact

Downloads

22 since deposited on 17 Mar 2022
17 in the past 12 months

Citations

5 Citations in Web of Science ®
6 Citations in Scopus

Search

in Google Scholar™

Services

Actions (login required)

Edit item

Actions (login required)

Edit item