Public Thesis Defense of Colin Scherpereel - ELI

Tracking the pulse of the Ocean: application of multiscale hydrodynamic models to simulate transport and fate of biophysical tracers by Colin Scherpereel -

Mercredi 7 octobre 2026 à 16h15 - Auditoire SUD09 - Croix du Sud - 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve -

Coastal ecosystems concentrate most of marine biodiversity and ecosystem services, yet their health has been increasingly compromised by a wide range of natural and anthropogenic pressures over the past decades, including coastal development, pollution, climate change, and ecological disturbances. In this context, biophysical transport models offer a versatile means of quantifying how such pressures propagate through the coastal ocean and manifest as threats to marine systems, as well as how the underlying ecosystems build their resilience through long-distance connections. However, capturing these dynamics represents a modelling challenge that requires resolving the multiscale nature of coastal flows. Here we apply the GPU-accelerated unstructured-mesh coastal ocean model SLIM, combined with Eulerian and Lagrangian transport frameworks, across three contrasting case studies to show that multiscale simulations can translate complex hydrodynamics into management-relevant insights for marine systems. In Kuwait Bay, we show that metre-scale flow perturbations induced by new coastal infrastructures disrupt bay-wide flushing properties and water retention, amplifying the risks of pollutant accumulation and marine mortality events. In the Arabian/Persian Gulf, we show that seasonal shifts between depth-coherent winter circulation and summer baroclinic dynamics determine how rapidly 137Cs radionuclides could disperse from the nuclear plant of Bushehr (Iran) and reach sensitive coastal areas, following a potential accident. In the Aruba-Curaçao-Bonaire basin, we show that the balance between basin-scale advection and island-scale retention controls potential coral connectivity, while being modulated by larval vertical migration and reproductive strategies, carrying direct implications for reef resilience and conservation planning. Altogether, this thesis demonstrates the potential of biophysical transport modelling as a unifying basis framework for informing marine system management across a diversity of coastal applications.

Jury members :

Prof. Emmanuel Hanert (UCLouvain) (Supervisor)
Dr. Jonathan Lambrechts (UCLouvain) (Supervisor)
Prof. Marnik Vanclooster (UCLouvain) (Chairperson)
Prof. Eric Deleersnijder (UCLouvain) (Secretary)
Dr. Geneviève Lacroix (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences)
Prof. Daniel Holstein (Stony Brook University)

Pay attention : the public defense of Colin Scherpereel will also take place in the form of a videoconference