EO Tracking of Marine Litter in the Mediterranean
Project Partners
Project Publications
Copernicus Sentinel-2 helps advance marine debris detection on ESA Sentinel Online
Project Description
Introducing an innovative approach to detecting Marine Litter in coastal waters around the world. The EO Tracking of Marine Debris in the Mediterranean Sea project utilises high resolution earth observation data to detect floating debris in the marine environment. This European based consortium will lead the development of this cutting edge technology. Using a debris detection processor developed by the consortium to analyse Sentinel-2 images, they can detect rafts of litter and vegetation floating on the sea surface. Approximately 5-10% of all of the world’s plastic can be found in the Mediterranean Sea, which is roughly 5-30 thousand tonnes of plastic and as ESA's Sentinel-2 satellite provides full coverage of the basin, it makes the Mediterranean Sea a prime location to develop and train a processor that can detect debris from space.
