About 10 million tons of plastic is dumped into the ocean each year, but scientists only know what happens to about 1%.
To scale the Atlantic Ocean and the plastics that float in it to see if that garbage can be tracked by satellites and, if so, what is the best technique to do so. That is the objective of a project that has already developed its first phase and that has Spanish participation.
About 10 million tons of plastic is dumped into the ocean each year, but scientists only know what happens to about 1%. Now the challenge is figuring out whether satellite tracking could help track its range and where it is going.
The researchers had worked with hypotheses to determine whether the use of satellites could work for this, but now they have gone a step further to avoid having to rely on guesswork.
The project of the European Space Agency (ESA) in collaboration with the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) has passed its first phase and the data is being analyzed.
The tests took place in a gigantic facility, which reproduces the conditions of the Atlantic account, at the Deltares Research Institute (Holland).
650 square meters equipped with wave generators to realistically recreate those that occur in the deep waters of the oceans, explained in a statement from ESA, Anton de Fockert, Deltares hydraulic engineer.
The plastic used included material previously recovered from the sea in cleaning campaigns and, to achieve the greatest possible realism, the most common types, such as bags, bottles, marine nets and ropes, cutlery and Styrofoam balls, were introduced into the installation.
Non-plastic elements were also added to better mimic the actual distribution found in the sea, such as cigarette butts.
The first test campaign started easily, with a lot of buoyant plastic and no waves, going on to reduce the total amount of trash by starting with light waves, and then progressively larger.
The participating scientific groups used different satellite techniques to establish whether they are valid and, if so, which is the best for locating and tracking plastics.
The UPC used GNSS reflectometry, based on the signals emitted by the navigation satellites; the Telecommunications Institute of Portugal and the University of Stirling in Scotland used radar remote sensing and a group from the University of Oldenburg (Germany) deployed optical instruments.
At a certain height of the installation, the participating teams, together with their specialized instruments, tried to simulate the observations from space.
Experts are processing the data and “initial results look promising”, but there is still a lot to analyze, according to Peter de Maagt, an ESA engineer who is overseeing the campaign.
This project is part of a larger campaign on marine plastic litter, supported by ESA’s Discovery and Preparation program. (I)
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