AN INTEGRATED MODEL SUITE FOR SEDIMENT AND POLLUTANT TRANSPORT IN SHALLOW LAKES

To assess effectively the impact of sediments and pollutants input to a water body, it is necessary to predict their spatial and temporal di stributions in the water column and in the sediment substrate, resulti ng from physico-chemical processes such as advection, dispersion, aggr egation, deposition, erosion and adsorption. Physical or mathematical representation of these processes requires a good estimate of the velo city held and circulation patterns induced by hydrodynamic forcing fun ctions. The modeling strategy adopted was to link similarly structured two-dimensional, vertically averaged finite element models for hydrod ynamics and sediment-pollutant transport. To enhance model use and int eraction, these models were interfaced with pre- and post-processing m odules. Using the same spatial grid and temporal scale, dynamic simula tions were performed to investigate mercury pollution in a shallow lak e. Results show that the integrated model suite provided a reasonable representation of the hydrodynamics and its influence on sediment and mercury transport processes. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Limit ed.