TrackMPD is a three-dimensional particle-tracking model for the transport of marine plastic debris in oceans, coastal, and estuarine systems. The power of TrackMPD lies in:
- its compatibility with diverse formats of current-velocity inputs;
- its ability to extend the Lagrangian modelling of advection-diffusion by adding more-complex and realistic particle behaviours and physical processes.
- its user-friendly design (code developed for Matlab).
TrackMPD v.2 can include
- beaching
- washing-off
- sinking
- deposition
- resuspension
- bed load
- biofouling
- degradation.
In particular, sinking, deposition and resuspension depend on particle behaviour, which relies on the particle density, size, shape, fouling state, and degradation state.
The model can incorporate new processes and behaviours, and change the implementation of already existing ones, with new experimental findings or particular applications. TrackMPD v2 allows for parallel computation of particle trajectories, which increases the computational efficiency significantly.
TrackMPD has thus a structured and coherent modelling framework to satisfy the criteria of flexibility, extendability, and interchangeability. It can use velocity data from various sources, such as different ocean general circulation models (OGCM: e.g. POM, FVCOM, TELEMAC, MARS, NEMO) and satellite observations, and can compute forward and backward trajectories in two or three dimensions.
The TrackMPD code is licensed under GPL (GNU General Public License). In summary, this means that the code is open source and may be used freely for non-commercial and commercial purposes. Any alterations to the TrackMPD source code or new modules must be licensed under GPL as well.
Refer to this publication for further details: Jalón-Rojas, I., Wang, X.H., Fredj, E. (2019). A 3D numerical model to Track Marine Plastic Debris (TrackMPD): Sensitivity of microplastic trajectories and fates to particle dynamical properties and physical processes, Marine Pollution Bulletin, 141, 256-272. doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2019.02.052. [PDF] [Science Direct]
When using TrackMPD in any scientific publication, technical report or otherwise formal writing, please cite our paper Jalón-Rojas et al. (2019).
Users can find the code of TrackMPD, the term of use, a getting-started tutorial, and application examples on GitHub: www.github.com/IJalonRojas/TrackMPD
Direct access to the getting-started tutorial here.
Text from Jalón-Rojas et al. (2019).
Header image by Wolfram Burner, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.