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An Analysis of Citizen Science and its Effect on Marine Plastic Pollution
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This honors thesis analyzes marine plastic pollution data collected through the Clean Swell mobile application, using Python for data processing and Tableau for visualization to understand patterns in beach litter composition and geographic distribution. The study evaluates citizen science as a tool for monitoring marine plastic pollution at scale.
My Honors thesis is an analysis of pollution data to gain more insight about the growing problem of marine plastic pollution. I retrieved online datasets collected by the Clean Swell trash collection mobile application and then analyzed this data using the Python programming language. After my Python analysis, I used Tableau to create data visualizations. This paper analyzes the effect that citizen science has on plastic pollution. Syracuse University’s recycling and trash figures, provided by Syracuse Haulers, are also analyzed. The purpose of including Syracuse University’s data is to bring a local point of view to this project and possibly motivate readers to work towards a solution to marine plastic pollution.
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Research digests by email
When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.