Satellites and light reflections help environmentalists spot coastal plastic waste
Source: https://phys.org/news/2022-02-satellites-environmentalists-coastal-plastic.html
Author: RMIT University
Geospatial scientists have found a way to detect plastic waste on remote beaches that are not visible in conventional satellite images, bringing us closer to global monitoring options. Millions of tons of plastic enter the oceans every year. While stopping this flow is crucial, so is tracking down what's already there so we can clean it up. The study, now published in Remote Sensing, used the unique infrared signals reflected by plastics to identify even tiny scraps amongst vast stretches of sand and rocks. This sets the foundation for allowing plastics to be detected within satellite images where plastics are smaller than a pixel. Lead author of the study and RMIT Ph.D. candidate Jenna Guffogg said monitoring beaches rather than oceans made sense because it's easier to remove the rubbish. Guffogg and her team completed fieldwork on the remote beaches of Australia's Cocos (Keeling) Islands, using sensing equipment to capture how infrared light was reflected by different types of plastic found on the Islands.