Marine litter detection and correlation with the seabird nest content

Merlino, Silvia; Abbate, M.; Pietrelli, Loris; Canepa, Paolo; Varella, Paolo

doi:10.1007/s12210-018-0750-3

Cited by 20 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The coasts included in these marine areas within the Pelagos Sanctuary are of extreme environmental importance, as they are rich in parks and MPAs located both near urban areas and in places that are not easily accessible and far from sources of direct pollution. Previous surveys of beach macrowaste carried out within the Pelagos Sanctuary, in a particular macro-area that includes that of our current survey, found that natural sites, and especially protected areas close to river mouths and/or located in places that are not easily accessible, showed a higher density than other areas [68,69]. As these beaches suffer from a lack of constant cleaning to remove accumulated debris including plastics, it is very plausible that these materials will degrade and fragment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 69%

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Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Chemically Characterized Microplastics within the Protected Area of Pelagos Sanctuary (NW Mediterranean Sea): Focus on Natural and Urban Beaches

Merlino

Locritani

Bernardi

et al. 2020

Water

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Data on the abundance and distribution of Anthropogenic Marine Debris (AMD) on the coastal areas of the northern Tyrrhenian coast are still scarce. The objective of this study is to characterize, in terms of size, color, morphology and polymeric nature, the Large Microplastics (LMPs), i.e., plastic objects within 1 and 5 mm, sampled on three beaches located within the coastal macro-area of the Pelagos Sanctuary, an international protected zone in the north-western Mediterranean. The beaches have similar morphological characteristics but different degrees of urbanization. LMPs were sampled seasonally for one year. The polymeric nature of a representative subsample of the collected LMPs was investigated using a portable Raman instrument, to assess the feasibility of in situ characterization. In this study, 26,486 items were sorted by typology (Expanded Polystyrene-EPS, fragments, and resin pellets), size, and for fragments and resin pellets, also by color and chemical nature. Statistical data on the quantity, density, type, spatial distribution, and seasonality of the sampled LMPs are presented. Differences in LMP abundance and composition were detected among sites. A seasonality trend emerges from our statistical analysis, depending on both LMP typology and urbanization degrees of the beaches. Our data do not show the existence of a relationship between the size of the investigated MPs and their color, while they suggest that the type of polymer influences the degree of fragmentation. This underlines the need to further investigate the mechanisms leading to the production and dispersion of MPs in coastal areas, taking into account both the urbanization of the beach, and therefore the possible sources of input, and the different types of MPs. Finally, a Raman portable instrument proved to be a valuable aid in performing in situ polymeric characterization of LMPs.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 69%

“…These areas could then become a place of accumulation of meso-and micro-plastics. Despite the relative abundance of recent monitoring dedicated to beached marine waste in the Mediterranean area, few such programs concern the Italian coasts overlooking the Tyrrhenian part of this sea [5,53,68,69], and none has dealt with MPs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Chemically Characterized Microplastics within the Protected Area of Pelagos Sanctuary (NW Mediterranean Sea): Focus on Natural and Urban Beaches

Merlino

Locritani

Bernardi

et al. 2020

Water

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“…The software used for the automatic flight of UAVs was "DRONE Harmony", a commercial software (free to use only for one month) that can perform several operations (to create the flight plan necessary, to capture the photos, etc.) in a simple and accurate way [54]. The total acquisition time of all images of the studied area, on each date, was about 21 minutes.…”

Section: Image Acquisition and Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Debris Survey in Coastal Areas: Long-Term Monitoring Programme to Study Spatial and Temporal Accumulation of the Dynamics of Beached Marine Litter

et al. 2020

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Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becoming increasingly accessible tools with widespread use as environmental monitoring systems. They can be used for anthropogenic marine debris survey, a recently growing research field. In fact, while the increasing efforts for offshore investigations lead to a considerable collection of data on this type of pollution in the open sea, there is still little knowledge of the materials deposited along the coasts and the mechanism that leads to their accumulation pattern. UAVs can be effective in bridging this gap by increasing the amount of data acquired to study coastal deposits, while also limiting the anthropogenic impact in protected areas. In this study, UAVs have been used to acquire geo-referenced RGB images in a selected zone of a protected marine area (the Migliarino, Massacciuccoli, and San Rossore park near Pisa, Italy), during a long-term (ten months) monitoring programme. A post processing system based on visual interpretation of the images allows the localization and identification of the anthropogenic marine debris within the scanned area, and the estimation of their spatial and temporal distribution in different zones of the beach. These results provide an opportunity to investigate the dynamics of accumulation over time, suggesting that our approach might be appropriate for monitoring and collecting such data in isolated, and especially in protected, areas with significant benefits for different types of stakeholders.

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“…Abandoned fishing nets, however are a special threat not only for fish, 1610 marine mammals (Stelfox et al, 2016) but also for birds (e.g. Merlino et al, 2018).…”

Section: Impacts Of Fisheries On Other Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human impacts and their interactions in the Baltic Sea region

Reckermann

Omstedt

Soomere

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Abstract. Coastal environments, in particular heavily populated semi-enclosed marginal seas and coasts like the Baltic Sea region, are stongly affected by human activities. A multitude of human impacts, including climate change, affects the different compartments of the environment, and these effects interact with each other. As part of the Baltic Earth Assessment Reports (BEAR), we present an inventory and discussion of different human-induced factors and processes affecting the environment of the Baltic Sea region, and their interrelations. Some are naturally occurring and modified by human activities (i.e. climate change, coastal processes, hypoxia, acidification, submarine groundwater discharges, marine ecosystems, non-indigenous species, land use and land cover), some are completely human-induced (i.e. agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries, river regulations, offshore wind farms, shipping, chemical contamination, dumped warfare agents, marine litter and microplastics, tourism, coastal management), and they are all interrelated to different degrees. We present a general description and analysis of the state of knowledge on these interrelations. Our main insight is that climate change has an overarching, integrating impact on all of the other factors and can be interpreted as a background effect, which has different implications for the other factors. Impacts on the environment and the human sphere can be roughly allocated to anthropogenic drivers such as food production, energy production, transport, industry and economy. We conclude that a sound management and regulation of human activities must be implemented in order to use and keep the environments and ecosystems of the Baltic Sea region sustainably in a good shape. This must balance the human needs, which exert tremendous pressures on the systems, as humans are the overwhelming driving force for almost all changes we see. The findings from this inventory of available information and analysis of the different factors and their interactions in the Baltic Sea region can largely be transferred to other comparable marginal and coastal seas in the world.

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Marine litter detection and correlation with the seabird nest content

Cited by 20 publications

References 16 publications

Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Chemically Characterized Microplastics within the Protected Area of Pelagos Sanctuary (NW Mediterranean Sea): Focus on Natural and Urban Beaches

Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Chemically Characterized Microplastics within the Protected Area of Pelagos Sanctuary (NW Mediterranean Sea): Focus on Natural and Urban Beaches

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Debris Survey in Coastal Areas: Long-Term Monitoring Programme to Study Spatial and Temporal Accumulation of the Dynamics of Beached Marine Litter

Human impacts and their interactions in the Baltic Sea region

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