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Modeling the Fate and Transport of Microplastics in Various Aquatic Environmental Compartments
Summary
This book chapter reviews mathematical models for tracking microplastic fate and transport in rivers, estuaries, oceans, and groundwater systems. It examines how hydrodynamic processes—advection, dispersion, sedimentation, and biofouling—are incorporated into process-based models to simulate microplastic movement across aquatic compartments.
Microplastics have been detected in various aquatic environmental compartments, including rivers, estuaries, oceans, and groundwater, and are known to cause adverse effects on plant, animal, human, and soil health. Microplastics in aquatic environments get transported through processes such as advection, dispersion, drifting, beaching, degradation, flocculation, sedimentation, and biofouling. The relative dominance of each of these processes varies among different aquatic compartments and depends on the size and density of microplastics, wind and wave action, current velocity, presence of microorganisms, sediment concentration, and salinity. Process-based models coupled with hydrodynamic models provide a realistic representation of microplastic transport processes in the environment. This chapter discusses modeling the fate and transport of microplastics in riverine, estuarine, marine, and subsurface ecosystems using hydrodynamic-process-based models.