This project is suitable for students from any discipline, interested in computers and programming. Bioturbation leads to pervasive modifications of the structure, texture, composition and other properties of sediments. Quantification of these effects through modelling is required in such fields as geochemistry, civil and environmental engineering, sedimentology, paleo-climatology, and benthic ecology.
Most current models represent bioturbation as a diffusion process.
This type of representation is good at fitting data and marginally successful at making actual predictions, but extremely limited in providing mechanistic understanding of the link between animal activities and sediment mixing. This failure to connect directly infaunal actions and observed mixing effects constitutes a major impediment to a deeper and more fundamental understanding of bioturbation. This requires nothing short of a radically new type of model. Model benthic organisms exist as automatons, i.e. programmable entities that move through the lattice by displacing or ingesting-defecating particles. Each automaton obeys a set of rules to simulate various mixing modes and animal feeding and foraging strategies.