Tracking Ocean Microplastics With Satellites
Satellite-driven tracking of ocean microplastics generates more data in one day than does data collected in 20 years via more traditional measurement methods. Here, researchers used NASA Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System to source data for analysis and learned that CYGNSS-tracked patterns of surfactants are likely to correlate with patterns of microplastics in the ocean.
“We can see the relationship between surface roughness and the presence of microplastics and surfactants,” said Yulin Pan , U-M naval architecture and marine engineering assistant professor. “The goal now is to understand the precise relationship between the three variables.”
Transcript
00:00:01 there isn't that much information out there about how microplastic concentrations change over time we can make measurements every day how Plastics are traditionally tracked is through net trawling essentially just boats dragging behind Nets and kind of seeing how many Plastics they pick up the orbiting microsatellite Observatory system cygnus was developed by the
00:00:24 University of Michigan to study hurricanes but now researchers are discovering another use that can Aid in tracking the growth of microplastics found in the ocean when there's stuff on the ocean surface it will dampen the roughness and that alters how much the radar scatters off the surface back into space and that's what we actually measure the amount of
00:00:46 data we get in a day from cygnus is greater than the amount of data that's been taken over the last 20 years by these natural ships Professor Pond and I have been working together for a while to help us understand how to interpret the data we started to think about using controlled experiments to better detect the microplastics in the ocean
00:01:12 the wave tank is equipped with ultrasonic sensors that can measure the surface elevation and surface roughness eventually we can understand the physics of these interactions with different concentrations of microplastics to establish a relationship that can be used by the thickness project the amount of Plastics in the ocean are going up all the time and we're really just
00:01:33 beginning to understand how bad the problem is and you know the worst part of the problem is they don't go away they'll stick around in the ocean for thousands of years before they break down being able to understand where it is and how bad it is is a step in the right direction to try to mitigate it foreign [Applause]
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