loading page

Identifying Marine Sources of Beached Plastics Through a Bayesian Framework: Application to Southwest Netherlands
  • Bram van Duinen,
  • Mikael Kaandorp,
  • Erik van Sebille
Bram van Duinen
Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, Utrecht University
Author Profile
Mikael Kaandorp
Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, Utrecht University

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

Author Profile
Erik van Sebille
Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, Utrecht University
Author Profile

Abstract

Beaches are thought to contain a large part of plastics entering the marine environment. Here, they can cause harm to biota, and can potentially break down into smaller fragments over time. To protect vulnerable beaches, it is advantageous to have information on the sources of this plastic. Here, we develop a universally applicable Bayesian framework to map sources for plastic arriving on a specific beach, applied to a beach in southwest the Netherlands. In this framework, we combine Lagrangian backtracking simulations of drifting particles with data of plastic input from coastlines, rivers and fishing activity. This facilitates spatiotemporal source attribution for plastic arriving at the specified beach. We show that the main sources are the east coast of the UK, the Dutch coast, the English channel (fisheries) and the Thames, Seine, Rhine and Trieux (rivers). We also show that particle age is a major uncertainty in source attribution using backtracking.
28 Feb 2022Published in Geophysical Research Letters volume 49 issue 4. 10.1029/2021GL097214