Finding Plastic Patches in Coastal Waters using Optical Satellite Data

Lauren Biermann*, Daniel Clewley, Victor Martinez-Vicente, Konstantinos Topouzelis

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Satellites collecting optical data offer a unique perspective from which to observe the problem of plastic litter in the marine environment, but few studies have successfully demonstrated their use for this purpose. For the first time, we show that patches of floating macroplastics are detectable in optical data acquired by the European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinel-2 satellites and, furthermore, are distinguishable from naturally occurring materials such as seaweed. We present case studies from four countries where suspected macroplastics were detected in Sentinel-2 Earth Observation data. Patches of materials on the ocean surface were highlighted using a novel Floating Debris Index (FDI) developed for the Sentinel-2 Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI). In all cases, floating aggregations were detectable on sub-pixel scales, and appeared to be composed of a mix of seaweed, sea foam, and macroplastics. Building first steps toward a future monitoring system, we leveraged spectral shape to identify macroplastics, and a Naïve Bayes algorithm to classify mixed materials. Suspected plastics were successfully classified as plastics with an accuracy of 86%.</jats:p>
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages0
JournalScientific Reports
Volume10
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 23 Apr 2020

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Finding Plastic Patches in Coastal Waters using Optical Satellite Data'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this