Ana Cedeno | Contributing Writer
Scientists at FIU have come up with a project that would help reduce plastic waste in Biscayne Bay.
By using modeling techniques, the scientists hope to gain a better understanding of how plastic waste affects the Biscayne Bay area and how to lessen the impacts.
The project was funded by the Environmental Protection Agency and is a model of north and south Biscayne Bay. It is led by Henry Briceño, Reinaldo Garcia, and Piero Garinaldi, all of whom are research professors.
“Microplastics are, you know, one of the newest emerging contaminants that we have to deal with,” said Giraldi, associate director of the Institute of Environment. “So we need to understand. Where they come from where they go and you know where if they accumulate somewhere in the bay.”
Giraldi’s role in the project is to collect samples in the tributaries that enter the bay and analyze them in the labs in FIU’s Biscayne Bay Campus. This helps figure out the size of the plastic in the water as well as where it goes. Samples are collected from places, including the Miami River and Little River.
In an article by NBCMiami, Henry Briceño, the principal investigator in the project, explained that the research would be able to identify the most important sources of plastic and how they move within the bay.
“We’ll be able to say where the most important sources of plastics are in the watershed, how they get into the bay, and how fast they get here,” Briceño said.
The model will be used to figure out what parts of the Bay see the most microplastic pollution, which has been an ongoing issue in the area.
“This will let us know The areas that are more prone to accumulation of plastics And concentrate future efforts of mitigating the effects of plastic in those areas that are more critical,” said Garcia.
According to Garcia, who is the second principal investigator of the project, a previous model started in 2019. It was while developing the first model that the idea for the current project was conceived.
“When we were developing the first model we had, and we had to go to the field and put instruments in the in the bay,” He said. “To measure velocities, salinity and number of parameters that were important for validating the first model.”
It was the data they received from that first model that inspired the idea for the current project, he said.
“We need to do something about it and we have the tools,” Garcia said. “In knowing where this plastic is going, where it’s coming from, how they the distribution of plastics are affected by the tides and wind that occur in the area. That is what motivates us to put together a proposal for the environmental protection agency that eventually got funded.”
The proposal for the project was analyzed last year and accepted this year.
“We have two components,” said Garcia, “One is the component that is the modeling that I’m in charge in that is some essentially an office work. But this is it’s extremely related to the field effort that so the field includes the field work includes deploying of instruments within the Bay Waters.”
The field effort is Briceño’s main area in the project.
Students from the school are also involved in the modeling and monitoring of the area. Other organizations involved in the project include the Miami-Dade Department of Environment and Hydronia, a private organization.
The model, according to Garcia, can be used to analyze different scenarios and will hopefully once validated lead to changes that can mitigate the microplastic from organizations such as environmental protection agencies.
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