Detection of floating plastics from satellite and unmanned aerial systems (Plastic Litter Project 2018)

Topouzelis, Konstantinos; Παπακωνσταντίνου, Απόστολος; Garaba, Shungudzemwoyo P.

doi:10.1016/j.jag.2019.03.011

Cited by 158 publications

(169 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…It has become clear that spectral remote sensing would improve by using complementary measurements based on different sensing technologies (Maximenko et al 2019). Manned and unmanned platforms equipped with LIDAR and thermal infrared (TIR) imaging have potential applications in the remote sensing of floating plastic debris (Girard-Ardhuin et al , Pichel et al 2012, Veenstra and Churnside 2012, Topouzelis et al 2019. TIR remote sensing measures the surface emissivity of the ocean and routinely provides sea surface temperature estimations.…”

Section: Remote Sensingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The physical oceanography of the transport of floating marine debris

Sebille

Aliani

Law

et al. 2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

612

267

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Marine plastic debris floating on the ocean surface is a major environmental problem. However, its distribution in the ocean is poorly mapped, and most of the plastic waste estimated to have entered the ocean from land is unaccounted for. Better understanding of how plastic debris is transported from coastal and marine sources is crucial to quantify and close the global inventory of marine plastics, which in turn represents critical information for mitigation or policy strategies. At the same time, plastic is a unique tracer that provides an opportunity to learn more about the physics and dynamics of our ocean across multiple scales, from the Ekman convergence in basin-scale gyres to individual waves in the surfzone. In this review, we comprehensively discuss what is known about the different processes that govern the transport of floating marine plastic debris in both the open ocean and the coastal zones, based on the published literature and referring to insights from neighbouring fields such as oil spill dispersion, marine safety recovery, plankton connectivity, and others. We discuss how measurements of marine plastics (both in situ and in the laboratory), remote sensing, and numerical simulations can elucidate these processes and their interactions across spatio-temporal scales. Environ. Res. Lett. 15 (2020) 023003 E van Sebille et al Environ. Res. Lett. 15 (2020) 023003 E van Sebille et al References Acha E M, Mianzan H W, Iribarne O, Gagliardini D A, Lasta C and Daleo P 2003 The role of the Rı́o de la Plata bottom salinity front in accumulating debris Mar. Pollut. Bull. 46 197-202 Acha E M, Piola A, Iribarne O and Mianzan H 2015 Ecological Processes at Marine Fronts: Oases in the Ocean (Berlin: Springer) Aliani S and Molcard A 2003 Hitch-hiking on floating marine debris: macrobenthic species in the Western Mediterranean Sea Hydrobiologia 503 59-67 Allen J 1985 Principles of Physical Sedimentology (Berlin: Springer) Alpers W 1985 Theory of radar imaging of internal waves Nature 314 245-7 Alsina J M and Cáceres I 2011 Sediment suspension events in the inner surf and swash zone. Measurements in large-scale and high-energy wave conditions Coast. Eng. 58

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Section: Remote Sensingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The physical oceanography of the transport of floating marine debris

Sebille

Aliani

Law

et al. 2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

612

267

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“…2b). Using derivatives of spectra has been shown to be a robust analytical tool in remote sensing Huguenin and Jones, 1986;Russell et al, 2016;Tsai and Philpot, 1998). Continuum removal was applied to the R, followed by calculating a relative band-depth index to enumerate the absorption intensity (Eq.…”

Section: Spectral Absorption Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Current key requirements expected from remote sensing are to detect, identify, quantify and track floating plastics. Feasibility studies centred on these four requirements have shown promising prospects in remote sensing of floating and submerged litter Aoyama, 2018;Kako et al, 2012;Topouzelis et al, 2019). Although current efforts are promising, there is a need to advance remote sensing of plastics and adapt future sensors to generate plastic-related end products.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hyperspectral ultraviolet to shortwave infrared characteristics of marine-harvested, washed-ashore and virgin plastics

Garaba

Dierssen

2020

Earth Syst. Sci. Data

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Abstract. Combating the imminent environmental problems associated with plastic litter requires a synergy of monitoring strategies, clean-up efforts, policymaking and interdisciplinary scientific research. Lately, remote sensing technologies have been evolving into a complementary monitoring strategy that might have future applications in the operational detection and tracking of plastic litter at repeated intervals covering wide geospatial areas. We therefore present a dataset of Lambertian-equivalent spectral reflectance measurements from the ultraviolet (UV, 350 nm) to shortwave infrared (SWIR, 2500 nm) of synthetic hydrocarbons (plastics). Spectral reflectance of wet and dry marine-harvested, washed-ashore, and virgin plastics was measured outdoors with a hyperspectral spectroradiometer. Samples were harvested from the major accumulation zones in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, suggesting a near representation of plastic litter in global oceans. We determined a representative bulk average spectral reflectance for the dry marine-harvested microplastics dataset available at https://doi.org/10.21232/jyxq-1m66 (Garaba and Dierssen, 2019c). Similar absorption features were identified in the dry samples of washed-ashore plastics: dataset available at https://doi.org/10.21232/ex5j-0z25 (Garaba and Dierssen, 2019a). The virgin pellets samples consisted of 11 polymer types typically found in floating aquatic plastic litter: dataset available at https://doi.org/10.21232/C27H34 (Garaba and Dierssen, 2017). Magnitude and shape features of the spectral reflectance collected were also evaluated for two scenarios involving dry and wet marine-harvested microplastics: dataset available at https://doi.org/10.21232/r7gg-yv83 (Garaba and Dierssen, 2019b). Reflectance of wet marine-harvested microplastics was noted to be lower in magnitude but had similar spectral shape to that of dry marine-harvested microplastics. Diagnostic absorption features common in the marine-harvested microplastics and washed-ashore plastics were identified at ∼931, 1215, 1417 and 1732 nm. In addition, we include metrics for a subset of the marine-harvested microplastics related to particle morphology, including sphericity and roundness. These datasets are also expected to improve and expand the scientific evidence-based knowledge of optical characteristics of common plastics found in aquatic litter. Furthermore, these datasets have potential use in radiative transfer simulations exploring the effects of plastics on ocean colour remote sensing and developing algorithms applicable to remote detection of floating plastic litter.

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“…Most progress has been made in the field of spectral remote sensing in visible (VIS), near-infrared (NIR) and short-wave infrared (SWIR) spectra where optical physics applies. Over these wavelengths, spectral light reflectance measurements of floating plastic litter have been made in situ [4], from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) [5], airplanes [6] and very recently, the Sentinel-2 satellite [5]. It has become clear that spectral remote sensing would be improved by using complementary measurements using different sensing technologies [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Thermal Infrared Remote Sensing of Plastic Pollution in Natural Waters

Goddijn-Murphy

Williamson

2019

Remote Sensing

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Plastic pollution in the world’s natural waters is of growing concern and currently receiving significant attention. However, remote sensing of marine plastic litter is still in the developmental stage. Most progress has been made in spectral remote sensing using visible to short-wave infrared wavelengths where optical physics applies. Thermal infrared (TIR) sensing could potentially monitor plastic water pollution but has not been studied in detail. We applied radiative transfer theory to predict TIR sensitivity to changes in the surface fraction of water covered by plastic litter and found that the temperature difference between the water surface and the surroundings controls the TIR signal. Hence, we mapped this difference for various months and times of the day using global SST (sea surface temperature) and t2m (temperature at 2 m height) hourly estimates from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), ERA5. The maps show how SST-t2m difference varied, altering the anticipated effectivity of TIR floating plastic litter remote sensing. We selected several locations of interest to predict the effectivity of TIR sensing of the plastic surface fraction. TIR remote sensing has promising potential and is expected to be more effective in areas with a high air–sea temperature difference.

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Detection of floating plastics from satellite and unmanned aerial systems (Plastic Litter Project 2018)

Cited by 158 publications

References 22 publications

The physical oceanography of the transport of floating marine debris

The physical oceanography of the transport of floating marine debris

Hyperspectral ultraviolet to shortwave infrared characteristics of marine-harvested, washed-ashore and virgin plastics

On Thermal Infrared Remote Sensing of Plastic Pollution in Natural Waters

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