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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Miguel Morales MaquedaORCiD, Dr Kheng-Lim GohORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
This article describes a novel Cellular Automata (CA) model to predict the transportation of buoyant marine plastics. The proposed CA model provides a simpler and more affordable approach to a field where the computationally intensive Lagrangian particle-tracking models dominate. The transportation of marine plastics was investigated using well-defined, probabilistic rules governing the advection and diffusion processes. The CA model was applied to evaluate the impact of two input scenarios, namely a “population” and a “river” scenario. Of the sub-tropical gyres, a high percentage of buoyant plastics were found in the Indian gyre (population: 5.0 %; river: 5.5 %) and North Pacific gyre (population: 5.5 %; river: 7 %). These findings show good agreement with previously published results from particle-tracking models. The CA model could be a useful rapid-scenario assessment tool for the estimation marine plastic pollution prior to more in-depth studies on effective mitigation measures to, for example, reduce plastics waste.
Author(s): Peng Shu Ng, Morales Maqueda MA, Goh KL
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Marine Pollution Bulletin
Year: 2023
Volume: 191
Print publication date: 01/06/2023
Online publication date: 03/05/2023
Acceptance date: 12/04/2023
Date deposited: 03/05/2023
ISSN (print): 0025-326X
ISSN (electronic): 1879-3363
Publisher: Elsevier
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2023.114950
DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2023.114950
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