Find The Plastic Flow

To animate the most likely pathways of plastics that end up in the North Pacific Garbage Patch and to quantify their travel times, travel distances and potential sources

• Flotsam and Jetsam by Flotsam and Jetsam and their presentation

• Garbage Patch Kids by Garbage Patch Kids and their presentation

• GarbagePatchKidz by Garbage Patch Kidz and their presentation

Background

We are living in the "Age of Plastics". Plastic production has increased dramatically worldwide over the last 50 years, passing from 0.5 million tons/yr in 1960 to almost 300 million tons/yr in 2013. With 8 million tons of plastics entering our ocean each year, and considering each piece of plastic takes over 400 years to degrade, marine plastic pollution it is a recognized and severe threat to the marine environment and humankind health.

Main regions of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Photo credit to NOAA Marine Debris

Marine plastic is accumulated in garbage patches, large areas of marine debris concentration that are formed by rotating rotating bodies of water called gyres. A garbage patch is made up of macroplastics and microplastics - tiny plastic pieces that are less than 5 millimeters long.

Examples of (a) macro plastic and (b) micro plastic.

It is possible to sail through a garbage patch and not see anything. As matter of fact, researches can only account for where 1% of marine plastic ends up; our ocean surface. That begs the question where is the missing 99%? The answer can be found on the seafloor, in marine life, and on our coastlines! The mysterious pathways of plastic from the North Pacific Garbage Patch to the coastlines is going to be the focus of participants of this hackathon.

The goals of this challenge are: (1) to animate the most likely pathways of plastics that end up in the North Pacific Garbage Patch; (2) to quantify their travel times and travel distances; and (3) to quantify, the potential sources and to match them with GIS data of rivers, populated cities, and beaches.

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Solutions

We recommend when beginning your hacking, that you start by keeping things simple. Download only one month of u and v data for the Pacific (any month of any year, up to you). If you are able to run the backtracking model (Parcels), then try to download one year of u and v for the Pacific. You can try to release N plastic particles at one single location of the eastern Pacific garbage patch, and release N plastic particles at one single location of the western Pacific garbage patch. If you succeed, we can use one year of model output and release millions of plastic particles to quantify sources.

1. A website that shows, if possible in near real time, most likely pathways of plastics that end up in the North Pacific Garbage Patch. An example of a useful websites to use as templates is Plastic Adrift. A static image about pathways and probabilities can be found below (from drifters, not real time simulations)

Examples of (a) pathways and (b) probabilities. Image credit to Dr. Lindo-Atichati

2. Add to the previous website information about their travel times and travel distances. An examples of a useful website to use as a template is [Follow the Glider] (http://followtheglider.socib.es)

3. Add to the previous website a GIS product that provides information about their travel times and travel distances.

Anything you can think of!

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Resources

For Solution 1., 2., and 3.

• Modeled Ocean Currents: Gridded eastward velocity (u) and northward velocity (v) data from HYCOM experiment GLBu0.08. u is West to East velocity of the ocean at each grid cell; v is South to North velocity of the ocean at each grid cell.
• Tracking model of virtual ocean particles: PARCELS: Probably A Really Computationally Efficient Lagrangian Simulator. There are great tutorials for using it at the OceanParcels web site.

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Challenge owner: David Lindo