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Article ? AI-assigned paper type based on the abstract. Classification may not be perfect — flag errors using the feedback button. Tier 2 ? Original research — experimental, observational, or case-control study. Direct primary evidence. Detection Methods Marine & Wildlife Sign in to save

Development and testing of a prototype indicator-based tool for identification of potential problem areas for marine litter in Europe's seas

The Science of The Total Environment 2023 1 citation ? Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count.
Ciarán Murray, Bert van Bavel, Ahmet E. Kıdeyş, Amy Lusher, Johnny Reker, Gašper Šubelj, Jesper H. Andersen

Summary

Researchers developed and tested a multi-metric Marine Litter Assessment Tool for mapping problem areas in European seas using data on seafloor litter, beach litter, and floating micro-litter. Of the 19% of European sea area with sufficient data, 74% was classified as a problem area, confirming marine litter as a widespread regional crisis.

Study Type Environmental

We demonstrate a prototype multi-metric indicator-based assessment tool (i.e. Marine Litter Assessment Tool - MALT) for mapping and identification of 'problem areas' and 'non-problem areas' regarding the occurrence of marine litter in Europe's seas. The study is based on a European-wide data set consisting of three marine litter indicators: (1) litter at the seafloor, (2) beach litter and (3) floating micro-litter. This publicly available data allowed litter status to be determined in 1,957,081 km2 (19.1 %) of the total area of Europe's seas (10,243,474 km2). Of the area assessed, 25.8 % (505,030 km2) was found to be 'non-problem areas' whilst 'problem areas' accounted for 74.2 % (1,452,051 km2). This indicates that marine litter is a large-scale problem in Europe's seas.

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