Zhu, X. ., Division of Applied Marine Phy, Miami, USA, xiaofang.zhu@rsmas.miami.edu
Wang, J. D., Division of Applied Marine Physics, University of Miami, Miami, USA, jwang@rsmas.miami.edu

MICROBIAL WATER QUALITY AT A SUBTROPICAL BEACH SETTING: A MODELING APPROACH

Beach water quality monitoring and prompt warnings are vital to protect people from possible health hazard. Compared to traditional monitoring program which measures fecal indicator bacteria at one location once per week, modeling method provides a more complete picture with better time resolution. A microbial water quality model is constructed by coupling a coastal circulation and transport model (CAFE3D) with a microbe fate model. The modeling domain is a bayside beach in Miami, Florida. The hydrodynamic model results are compared with current velocity measurements. For the microbe fate model, our work shows that human shedding, dog feces and rainwater runoff are major sources; also die-off rate is extracted from experiment and literature. However, there are some randomness in this problem such as location and number of sources (human, dog and runoff). We approach this problem by performing Monte Carlo simulation: define location and number of source terms as random variables, determine their probability distribution by analyzing high resolution camera images of the beach, run the model using random input terms and analyze the results.

Poster presentation

Presentation is given by student: Yes
Session #:120
Date: 03-03-2008
Time: 17:30 - 19:30