We are pleased to present our latest contribution to the marine litter issue. A decade ago, based on a worldwide oceanographic survey, we drew the first global map of floating plastic debris. Many researchers have continued sampling, adding more and more data and expanding map coverage. The advances have been very significant, but field measurements remain sparse and unexplored areas still cover most of the ocean. The image of global plastic pollution is incomplete and blurred, with a few new pixels being unvealed each year. Oceanographic surveys alone are insufficient to map marine litter trends on a global scale.
We focused on satellites as the great hope for global monitoring of marine litter. But the weakness of the signal reflected from floating litter to space has made the challenge harder than expected. In 2021, in a special issue in Frontiers in Marine Science, we defined the so-called "litter windrows" as a reliable target for detection from satellite. However, the usefulness of these small, ephemeral and dispersed aggregations of floating debris as a proxy for sustained, global monitoring was a big uncertainty. After six years of collaborative work with colleagues from six countries, we have finally found a way to track floating litter from space. The paper, published now in Nature Communications in 2024, tests this methodology in the Mediterranean Sea, using the most suitable satellites currently in orbit. We obtained an unprecedented view of the hotspots and trends of marine litter over weeks and years. Furthermore, the paper proposes the design of an optimal sensor specifically for marine litter, which would increase the detection capacity twenty-fold.
On this website, we provide ancillary material to know more about our new research. Please, find below quick access buttoms to PICTURES related to litter windrows and their detection, INFOGRAHICS derived from the findings; the source DATA File; and PRESS NOTES in English and Spanish.
Press note Infographics Pictures Data
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CITATION
Cózar, A., Arias, M., et al. PROOF OF CONCEPT FOR A NEW SENSOR TO MONITOR MARINE LITTER FROM SPACE. Nature Communications 15, 4637 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-48674-7
