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Microplastics pollution in sediments of Moroccan urban beaches: The Taghazout coast as a case study
Summary
Microplastic pollution was surveyed over two consecutive years in sediments from a heavily urbanized beach in Morocco, finding concentrations increased from 915 to 1,448 particles per kg between 2018 and 2019. The highest contamination was found at the most tourist-frequented southern end of the beach. The study provides baseline data for Moroccan Atlantic beaches and highlights tourism and urban development as key drivers of coastal microplastic accumulation.
This work describes the spatiotemporal analysis of microplastics (MPs) pollution in sediments collected on a high urbanized beach located in Taghazout coast, central Atlantic part of Morocco. The study area is mainly composed of moderately well-sorted fine sands with an average density of MPs that ranged between 915 MPs/kg in 2018 and 1448 MPs/kg in 2019. The most polluted sites were in the south part of Taghazout coast, close to facilities of where beachgoers are often found. Microplastic Pollution Index (MPPI), Microplastic Impact Coefficient (CMPI), Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (AHC), and Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) revealed spatiotemporal variation of MPs pollution. Thus, the principal component analysis (PCA) showed a low correlation between the sediment characteristics (i.e., grain size, sorting, skewness) and MPs densities. Overall, the outputs of this baseline recommend implementing plastic management strategies to eliminate or at least minimize the collateral effects generated by MPs pollution in sediments of urbanized beaches. Also see: https://micro2022.sciencesconf.org/423883/document