Programme: Tender ESA
Project title: Mapping Windrows as Proxy for Marine Litter Monitoring from Space
Acronym: ESA-WASP
Duration: 06/052020 – 05/01/2022
Total budget: € 100.000
ISMAR budget: € 10.000
Web site: n.a.
Summary:
There is high interest in identifying potential hotspots for litter accumulation. Subtropical garbage patches have outstanding concentrations of marine litter (ML), but they still have lower concentration than other accumulations. An example of ephemeral hotspots are windrows, sub-mesoscale fronts and other forms of water circulation in the upper layer of the project “EO Track for Marine Litter in the Mediterranean Sea” has proved that Sentinel-2 can detect and report on presence of those accumulations as proxies. These occurrences have combinations of ML and usually other organic debris, but recent investigations have shown they have significant higher ML concentrations with respect the general levels of a given basin.
We propose to exploit the recently developed prototype Sentinel-2 Marine Litter Data Processor and check its capability for monitoring purposes. The main task of this activity will be running the processor for the entire archive of S-2A/B images over the entire Mediterranean Sea, including Portugal, Cantabric Sea and Gulf of Biscay coastal areas.
Contact person in ISMAR: stefano.aliani@sp.ismar.cnr.it
Partnership:
- ARGANS (United Kingdom)
- University of Cadiz – UCA (Spain)
- CNR-ISMAR (Italy)