Mathematical modeling of the fate and transport of plastic pollution, hydrodynamics, and data assimilation

• M. J. Hoffman and E. Hittinger (2017). Inventory and transport of plastic debris in the Laurentian Great Lakes. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 115 (1–2), 273–281. [Publisher Link] The first full-system plastic budget for the Great Lakes, estimating nearly 10,000 metric tons of plastic entering the lakes each year; widely covered in national media.
• Daily, J. and M. J. Hoffman (2020). Modeling the three-dimensional transport and distribution of multiple microplastic polymer types in Lake Erie. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 154. [Publisher Link] The first mass estimates of plastic throughout the water column and on the bottom of any of the Great Lakes.
• M. J. Hoffman and M. H. DiBenedetto (2026). How size-dependent settling can both bias and inform microplastics observations. Environmental Research Communications, 8 (6), 065061. [Publisher Link] Shows how particle settling skews microplastic sampling — and how that bias can be turned into information.
• Onink, V., C. Jongedijk, M. J. Hoffman, E. Van Sebille, and C. Laufkotter (2021). Global simulations of marine plastic transport show plastic trapping in coastal zones. Environmental Research Letters, 16 (6), 064053. [Publisher Link] Global simulations showing most floating plastic stays trapped near coastlines rather than drifting to open-ocean garbage patches.
• Rangnekar, A., N. Mokashi, E. J. Ientilucci, C. Kanan, and M. J. Hoffman (2020). AeroRIT: A New Scene for Hyperspectral Image Analysis. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 58 (11), 8116–8124. [Publisher Link] An openly released benchmark dataset now used across the hyperspectral imaging community.

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