Chasing water: The oceanography of the transport of floating material
Audience: Member of University - ALL Format: Hybrid
Friday, 22 May 2026, 12pm to 1pm
Abstract: Ocean currents transport material like nutrients, plankton and plastic over the globe. The most natural way to study these transport pathways in both modern-day and palaeo contexts, is by simulating virtual Lagrangian particles in fine-resolution ocean models.
In this seminar, I will give an overview of some recent work with Lagrangian particle analysis. I will introduce our open-source parcels-code.org framework and show how we use this framework to simulate the transport of (palaeo)plankton and micro- and macroplastic, in order to map their distributions on scales of kilometers. I will discuss how we develop new parameterizations for subgrid-scale transport processes of floating material; and compare these parameterizations to field and lab measurements. I will particularly focus on coastal processes and how they control the beaching, resuspension and fragmentation of particulate items.
Speaker(s): Prof Dr Erik van Sebille (Utrecht University)
Series: Earth Sciences research seminars
Department: Earth Sciences (Department)
Register here: https://www.earth.ox.ac.uk/event/chasing-water-the-oceanography-of-the-transport-of-floating-material