{"id":6105,"date":"2018-04-10T16:31:22","date_gmt":"2018-04-10T11:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cawater-info.net\/all_about_water\/en\/?p=6105"},"modified":"2018-04-10T16:31:22","modified_gmt":"2018-04-10T11:31:22","slug":"tracking-ocean-plastic-pollution-from-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.cawater-info.net\/all_about_water\/en\/?p=6105","title":{"rendered":"Tracking Ocean Plastic Pollution From Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Space Agency is developing technology to allow satellites to identify the concentration, movement and origin of plastic debris across the world\u2019s\u00a0oceans.<\/em><\/p>\n

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A European Space Agency satellite.\u00a0European Space Agency<\/p><\/div>\n

PAOLO CORRADI AND\u00a0Luca Maresi had the same idea: tracking plastic trash from\u00a0space.<\/p>\n

Corradi, an engineer with the European Space Agency\u2019s (ESA) optics division in the Netherlands, had been hearing about plastic marine litter from a friend at a nonprofit working on the issue. Maresi, Corradi\u2019s boss, had seen the problem firsthand during sailing\u00a0trips.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe actually had the same study idea independently and inspired by different reasons,\u201d Corradi\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

The men figured that deploying satellites to monitor marine litter on a global scale could give researchers working on plastic pollution data about its abundance, concentrations and movement. But it remains to be seen whether such satellite tracking will be possible and whether it will be useful in the effort to combat a huge\u00a0and growing\u00a0problem that has spawned \u201cgyres\u201d of plastic trash in the world\u2019s\u00a0oceans.<\/p>\n

ESA\u00a0began the effort in September. For now, Corradi says, the goal is to demonstrate the feasibility of remote sensing of plastic litter with satellites. Eventually, the scientists would like to be able to provide data that could produce a map of global concentrations of the plastic\u00a0debris.<\/p>\n

That data, the researchers\u00a0said at a conference last month, could be a way to validate current models and increase certainty about how ocean plastic pollution is accumulating and moving \u2013 and its origin. That would potentially lead to more targeted actions to combat\u00a0it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd in that sense, the time evolution of such a concentration map would also provide a tool to monitor the effectiveness of the measures put in place to solve the problem,\u201d Corradi\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

The project, called\u00a0OptiMAL\u00a0(Optical methods for Marine Litter detection), is initially focused on detecting microplastics on or near the surface of the ocean as well as larger pieces of plastic along\u00a0shorelines.<\/p>\n

So far the researchers have used images from the satellite\u00a0Sentinel-3\u00a0and checked them against ground and aerial\u00a0surveys.<\/p>\n

Now they\u2019re trying to develop ways of identifying marine debris using \u201coptical reflectance properties in the visible and infrared light spectrum,\u201d Corradi said. In other words, whether plastics can be identified in the ocean from the way floating debris reflects different wavelengths of sunlight. He noted that satellites detect phytoplankton\u00a0in a similar way.<\/p>\n

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Concentrations of plastic in the world\u2019s oceans. (European Space\u00a0Agency)<\/p><\/div>\n

If all goes according to plan, the scientists will collect the spectral signals of plastic at sea for different types of material in varying states of degradation and concentrations. The signals would then be entered into computer models that would simulate how those signals would look through the atmosphere, which would indicate whether it\u2019s possible for a satellite orbiting the Earth to detect those signals and, if so,\u00a0how.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should be able to report our first results by the end of this year,\u201d Corradi\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

It could mean using existing satellites or even being able to detect plastics in current satellite images. But Corradi notes that \u201cnone of these (existing) orbiting instruments was designed with the goal to look for plastic marine litter and it is still not clear what to look for in the\u00a0data.\u201d<\/p>\n

If all works out and the researchers receive strong enough signals to be able to detect plastics, they can start to build algorithms that might be able to detect and quantify concentrations of plastic\u00a0litter.<\/p>\n

If so, they\u2019ll be breaking new ground in the fight against plastic pollution, though cleanup advocates are uncertain the gains will be worth the\u00a0effort.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first project to map marine plastic pollution on a global scale. German researchers put together an\u00a0interactive map\u00a0last year, for instance, by compiling the data from more than a thousand\u00a0studies.<\/p>\n

Marcus Eriksen, cofounder of the 5 Gyres Institute, which works to combat \u201cthe global health crisis of plastic pollution,\u201d says he\u2019s seen other efforts to aerially monitor ocean plastic pollution. But those have been aerial inspections conducted by a plane or drone and typically focus on a single region, such as a\u00a0survey of plastic in Hawaiian waters\u00a0last\u00a0year.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one has been able to do it from outer space,\u201d Eriksen said. \u201cI\u2019ve heard a lot of talk, but haven\u2019t seen anyone make a valiant\u00a0effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he sees several challenges with the satellite strategy. Most ocean plastic is covered in algae and other marine life, and much of it would be widely dispersed, making it harder to\u00a0detect.<\/p>\n

There could be another problem even if researchers overcome those issues, though. Eriksen imagines satellites would only be able to see what\u2019s on the sea\u2019s surface. \u201cTo be honest, what\u2019s on the surface isn\u2019t the bulk of the issue,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat\u2019s below the surface is really impossible to\u00a0tell.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2014, Eriksen estimated that there was\u00a0250,000 metric tons\u00a0of plastic floating on the surface of the ocean. (That survey was\u00a0visualized on a mapmade by New Zealand designers last\u00a0year.)<\/p>\n

But a\u00a02015 study\u00a0estimated the amount of plastic waste making its way from cities into the oceans at\u00a04.8\u00a0to\u00a012.7\u00a0million metric\u00a0tons.<\/p>\n

That could mean at least\u00a04.5\u00a0million metric tons are beneath the ocean\u2019s surface, likely out of the reach of satellite\u00a0sensors.<\/p>\n

Eriksen does think surveys from the air \u2013 or space \u2013 could be useful in quantifying fishing gear debris as good data could allow policymakers and industry to address so-called \u201cghost gear.\u201d \u201cThe more data we have on that, the easier it is to make a case,\u201d he\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

But Eriksen said tackling the ocean plastic pollution crisis also requires understanding the flow of debris from land to sea. \u201cWe have so little river data,\u201d he\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0https:\/\/www.newsdeeply.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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The European Space Agency is developing technology to allow satellites to identify the concentration, movement and origin of plastic debris across the world\u2019s\u00a0oceans. PAOLO CORRADI AND\u00a0Luca Maresi had the same idea: tracking plastic trash from\u00a0space. Corradi, an engineer with the European Space Agency\u2019s (ESA) optics division in the Netherlands, had been hearing about plastic marine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cawater-info.net\/all_about_water\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6105"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cawater-info.net\/all_about_water\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cawater-info.net\/all_about_water\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cawater-info.net\/all_about_water\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cawater-info.net\/all_about_water\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.cawater-info.net\/all_about_water\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6110,"href":"http:\/\/www.cawater-info.net\/all_about_water\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6105\/revisions\/6110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cawater-info.net\/all_about_water\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cawater-info.net\/all_about_water\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cawater-info.net\/all_about_water\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}