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Disentangling Variability in Riverbank Macrolitter Observations

Environmental Science & Technology 2021 53 citations ? Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count. Score: 55 ? 0–100 AI score estimating relevance to the microplastics field. Papers below 30 are filtered from public browse.

Caspar T. J. Roebroek, Caspar T. J. Roebroek, Caspar T. J. Roebroek, Caspar T. J. Roebroek, Caspar T. J. Roebroek, Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Paul Vriend, Paul Vriend, Paul Vriend, Paul Vriend, Paul Vriend, Paul Vriend, Paul Vriend, Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Paul Vriend, Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Caspar T. J. Roebroek, Caspar T. J. Roebroek, Caspar T. J. Roebroek, Tim van Emmerik Paul Vriend, Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Paul Vriend, Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Rolf Hut, Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Paul Vriend, Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Caspar T. J. Roebroek, Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Paul Vriend, Tim van Emmerik Paul Vriend, Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Paul Vriend, Paul Vriend, Paul Vriend, Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Paul Vriend, Paul Vriend, Tim van Emmerik Winnie de Winter, Winnie de Winter, Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Marijke Boonstra, Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Marijke Boonstra, Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Paul Vriend, Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Paul Vriend, Tim van Emmerik Paul Vriend, Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Winnie de Winter, Winnie de Winter, Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik Tim van Emmerik

Summary

Researchers analyzed two years of citizen science observations of riverbank litter across over 200 locations in the Dutch Rhine-Meuse delta. They found that while observer bias was minimal, weather and river flow conditions explained some variation in litter counts, though the majority of variability remained unexplained. The study suggests that macrolitter dynamics in rivers are complex and likely driven by multiple factors beyond what current monitoring approaches can fully capture.

Study Type Environmental

Anthropogenic macrolitter (>0.5 cm) in rivers is of increasing concern. It has been found to have an adverse effect on riverine ecosystem health, and the livelihoods of the communities depending on and living next to these ecosystems. Yet, little is known on how macrolitter reaches and propagates through these ecosystems. A better understanding of macrolitter transport dynamics is key in developing effective reduction, preventive, and cleanup measures. In this study, we analyzed a novel dataset of citizen science riverbank macrolitter observations in the Dutch Rhine-Meuse delta, spanning two years of observations on over 200 unique locations, with the litter categorized into 111 item categories according to the river-OSPAR protocol. With the use of regression models, we analyzed how much of the variation in the observations can be explained by hydrometeorology, observer bias, and location, and how much can instead be explained by temporal trends and seasonality. The results show that observation bias is very low, with only a few exceptions, in contrast with the total variance in the observations. Additionally, the models show that precipitation, wind speed, and river flow are all important explanatory variables in litter abundance variability. However, the total number of items that can significantly be explained by the regression models is 19% and only six item categories display an R<sup>2</sup> above 0.4. This suggests that a very substantial part of the variability in macrolitter abundance is a product of chance, caused by unaccounted (and often fundamentally unknowable) stochastic processes, rather than being driven by the deterministic processes studied in our analyses. The implications of these findings are that for modeling macrolitter movement through rivers effectively, a probabilistic approach and a strong uncertainty analysis are fundamental. In turn, point observations of macrolitter need to be planned to capture short-term variability.

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