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Litter Selfie: A Citizen Science Guide for Photorecording Macroplastic Deposition along Mountain Rivers Using a Smartphone
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This citizen science guide presents a smartphone-based protocol for systematically photographing and recording macroplastic debris along mountain rivers, enabling volunteers to generate spatially consistent litter data at scale. Standardized large-scale surveys of river plastic are essential for tracking how much land-based plastic eventually reaches the ocean.
Macroplastic pollution in mountain rivers can threaten water resources, biodiversity, and the recreational values provided by them. The first step towards evaluating and then mitigating these risks is the systematic collection of reliable and spatially uniform data on the amount and type of macroplastics deposited in different land covers occurring in a mountain river channel. To maximise the opportunity for the large-scale collection of such data using the citizen science approach, we propose in this study an illustrated step-by-step guide to sample the macroplastic deposited along mountain rivers and to record the collected information using a photo taken by smartphone and a simple online form. Our guide includes three steps: (i) the location of sampling plots across 3–4 predefined surface covers occurring in mountain rivers of temperate climate, (ii) the hand collection of macroplastic deposited in them, and (iii) the photorecording and archiving of information on macroplastics collected using a smartphone and an online form. The proposed guide can allow for the low-cost collection of data on macroplastic deposition in mountain rivers on regional and global scales. The collected data can be further analysed by environmental scientists to quantify the amount and types of macroplastic deposited and to evaluate the resulting risks. They can be also used as illustrative materials to increase the awareness of local communities about the plastic pollution problem.
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