Plastic pollution of the aquatic environment is a weighty problem for ecosystems, as the influx of this type of litter is estimated at millions of tons per year. In order to make reliable assessments of the degree of risk and to plan activities aimed at reducing plastic pollution, it is necessary to know the local sources, distribution routes and trends that measure the effectiveness of the undertaken protective measures. In order to achieve these objectives, a method is needed to assess the degree of pollution over as wide an area as possible. Detection from the air or satellite seems to be a universal solution, but the existing measurement methods were burdened with a significant error due to the fact that plastic garbage becomes a habitat for plants and animals, which makes their identification difficult. The situation was changed by the installation of multispectral imaging sensors with the range from 490 to 1610 nm on the Sentinel-2 satellites. This measurement system, working on 12 channels with a resolution of up to 10m, makes it possible to determine the proportion of macroplastic in floating patches containing a variety of matter, from algae to pumice and sea foam. . The measurement system with the algorithm used is described in the publication of L. Biermann et al. Finding Plastic Patches in Coastal Waters using Optical Satellite Data; Scientific Reports 2020

Image: public domain.