Miki Hondzo, Principal Investigator

Modeling Nutrient Flux at the Sediment-Water Interface in Aquatic Systems

In spite of increasing computational resources, river, lake, and ocean circulation models cannot resolve all relevant scales of motion; hence, parameterizations for sub-grid scales continue to be necessary. In particular, the kinetics of chemical and biological reactions may be best described at the smallest scales, comparable with (molecular) diffusional length scales. Large-eddy simulation models used to study transport processes in aquatic environments solve the unsteady three-dimensional transport equations for all scales of motion larger than the grid size on the order of 10 m, while the contribution of the sub-grid scales is resolved using a sub-grid scale model. These researchers were concerned with the study of mass flux at the sediment-water interface in aquatic environments, with specific interested in nutrient cycling. In this research, numerical modeling of phosphorus dynamics in aquatic sediments was used to develop sub-grid scale models that can be used to simulate nutrient dynamics in the water quality models.

Research Group

Hector Bravo, Research Associate
Hong Wang, Supercomputing Institute Research Scholar