Suchergebnisse

Plastic pollution in the marine environment is a pervasive, global problem that threatens wildlife and human health. Routine monitoring is required to determine pollution hotspots, focus clean-up efforts, and assess the efficacy of legislation implemented to reduce environmental contamination. The shoreline represents an accessible area, relative to open water, from which to monitor this. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer a low-cost platform for remote sensing that operates below cloud coverage, which can interfere with satellite imagery. Detection of plastic using visible light is limited however, and results may be improved by using short-wave infrared (SWIR) imagery to collect chemical information. Within the commercial recycling industry, plastic items are sorted successfully based on their composition using SWIR instrumentation that measures the chemical spectra of waste items under controlled illumination. Here, proof of concept is established for aerial detection of domestic and shoreline-harvested plastic items on a beach under natural sunlight with a lightweight (800 g), hyperspectral SWIR camera deployed at an altitude of ∼ 5 m over ∼ 30-m transects. The results of spectral correlation mapping to compare imagery spectra to polyethylene and polypropylene reference spectra demonstrate that these two polymers can be successfully detected with this novel method.

ABSTRACT The ocean plays a crucial role in the functioning of the Earth System and in the provision of vital goods and services. The United Nations (UN) declared 2021–2030 as the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. The Roadmap for the Ocean Decade aims to achieve six critical societal outcomes (SOs) by 2030, through the pursuit of four objectives (Os). It specifically recognizes the scarcity of biological data for deep-sea biomes, and challenges the global scientific community to conduct research to advance understanding of deep-sea ecosystems to inform sustainable management. In this paper, we map four key scientific questions identified by the academic community to the Ocean Decade SOs: (i) What is the diversity of life in the deep ocean? (ii) How are populations and habitats connected? (iii) What is the role of living organisms in ecosystem function and service provision? and (iv) How do species, communities, and ecosystems respond to disturbance? We then consider the design of a global-scale program to address these questions by reviewing key drivers of ecological pattern and process. We recommend using the following criteria to stratify a global survey design: biogeographic region, depth, horizontal distance, substrate type, high and low climate hazard, fished/unfished, near/far from sources of pollution, licensed/protected from industry activities. We consider both spatial and temporal surveys, and emphasize new biological data collection that prioritizes southern and polar latitudes, deeper ( > 2000 m) depths, and midwater environments. We provide guidance on observational, experimental, and monitoring needs for different benthic and pelagic ecosystems. We then review recent efforts to standardize biological data and specimen collection and archiving, making "sampling design to knowledge application" recommendations in the context of a new global program. We also review and comment on needs, and recommend actions, to develop capacity in deep-sea research; and the role of inclusivity ...