GNSS-R Observations of Marine Plastic Litter in a Water Flume: An Experimental Study

Currently, eight million metric tons of plastic end up in the oceans every year, and microplastics in different forms are present in almost all water systems in the world: streams, rivers, lakes, or oceans, and even in our blood. Detection of marine litter is an urgent task. Some works have recently reported the potential of GNSS-Reflectometry to detect marine plastic litter from space. This study presents the results of a controlled field experiment conducted under the auspices of ESA at the “Atlantic Basin” at the Deltares research institute (Delft, The Netherlands). Several types of wave conditions were created: sinusoidal and with JONSWAP spectrum, with different significant wave heights, and with different types of plastics and marine litter collected from the Dutch coast. Experimental results show the difficulty in detecting marine plastic litter based on a change of the reflected power. However, a statistical analysis of the GNSS-R estimated reflectivities (amplitude and phase) computed with very short integration times (coherent integration time Tcoh = 1 ms, and no incoherent averaging: Nincoh = 1) show that it may be possible to detect large accumulations of some types of marine litter that dampen the water waves, such as nets, bottles in a net, food wraps, and bags.