MARUM Research Academy

Assessing macro plastic pollution along a tidal strait shoreline using innovative techniques

Although plastic pollution is one of the most important environmental issues nowadays, there is still a knowledge gap in terms of understanding the spatial distribution, transport and depositional mechanisms of plastic particles in the environment.

The Strait of Messina, in Southern Italy, is an area with one of the largest marine litter densities worldwide. The strong currents present in the area are one of the potential reasons for the plastic accumulation in this setting. This region of Italy has also a particular type of torrential rivers, named Fiumara, which transport water, sediment and litter to the co astal area via flash floods. This often is linked with a high input of plastic litter that accumulates in the coastal area.

The goal of this PhD project is to map the distribution of macro plastics along the shoreline of the Messina Strait, obtain by combination of drone imagery and machine learning, and with it, to understand the role of different factors (river discharge, marine currents) in redistributing plastic in the environment and to seek correlation between the behaviour of a plastic to a sediment to those factors.