A study conducted by INGV, CNR-ISMAR and Sapienza University of Rome shows that satellite data are able to identify accumulations of plastic on the sea surface, opening up new perspectives for monitoring plastic waste in aquatic environments from space.
Identifying accumulations of plastic in the sea from space: this was the aim of a study conducted by theIstituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), from the Institute of Marine Sciences of the National Research Council (CNR-ISMAR) and from Sapienza University of Rome under the program Space It Up! financed byItalian Space Agency (ASI) and from Ministry of University and Research (MUR) pursuant to contract no. 2024-5-E.0 – CUP I53D24000060005.
Thanks to two experiments conducted in Lake Massaciuccoli in Tuscany and in the Gulf of La Spezia, the researchers have demonstrated that satellite data acquired by Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors They allow the identification of floating accumulations of plastic, providing one of the first experimental findings on the potential of this technology in a marine environment. The results were published in the scientific journal Remote Sensing of Environment.
To conduct the experiments, a small plastic island was created, designed to reproduce as realistically as possible the shape and size typical of plastic debris accumulations found in marine and ocean environments. The SAR sensors aboard the satellites COSMO-SkyMed, program of theItalian Space Agency and Ministry of Defence, and ICEYE They acquired images of the island using different configurations in terms of spatial resolution, observation geometry, and polarization. Image analysis revealed that the plastic accumulations are clearly distinguishable from the surrounding water surface. The published study shows that the presence of plastic alters the surface roughness of the water, resulting in an increase in the signal intensity measured by the sensor.
This result opens New perspectives for monitoring marine plastic waste from satellite radar data. In fact, until now, most of the studies conducted on the topic have focused on the use of optical sensors operating in the electromagnetic spectrum of the visible and thermal infrared, while the use of SAR sensors is still little explored, despite presenting an important advantage: this technology, in fact, It can acquire images both day and night and even in the presence of cloud cover, offering the possibility, in the future, to monitor plastic waste in aquatic environments with greater continuity.
Link to video material related to the study
Useful links:
Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
Institute of Marine Sciences of the National Research Council (CNR-ISMAR)
