Revealing the role of land-use features on macrolitter distribution in Swiss freshwaters.

Macrolitter, especially macroplastics, (> 0.5 cm) negatively impact freshwater ecosystems, where they can be retained along lake shores, riverbanks, floodplains or bed sediments. Long-term and large-scale assessments of macrolitter on riverbanks and lake shores provide an understanding of litter abundance, composition, and origin in freshwater systems.

Detecting floating litter in freshwater bodies with semi-supervised deep learning.

Researchers and practitioners have extensively utilized supervised Deep Learning methods to quantify floating litter in rivers and canals. These methods require the availability of large amount of labeled data for training. The labeling work is expensive and laborious, resulting in small open datasets available in the field compared to the comprehensive datasets for computer vision, e.

Efficient plastic detection in coastal areas with selected spectral bands.

Marine plastic pollution poses significant ecological, economic, and social challenges, necessitating innovative detection, management, and mitigation solutions. Spectral imaging and optical remote sensing have proven valuable tools in detecting and characterizing macroplastics in aquatic environments. Despite numerous studies focusing on bands of interest in the shortwave infrared spectrum, the high cost of sensors in this range makes it difficult to mass-produce them for long-term and large-scale applications.

Mismanaged plastic waste as a predictor for river plastic pollution.

Hydrometeorological processes are often assumed to be key drivers of plastic transport. However, the predominant focus on these factors overlooks the impact of anthropogenic factors, such as mismanaged plastic waste (MPW) on plastic transport variability. Here, we investigate the roles of both anthropogenic and hydrometeorological factors on plastic pollution in the Odaw catchment, Ghana.

Wastewater Discharge Transports Riverine Microplastics over Long Distances.

Wastewater discharge from wastewater treatment plants continuously pumps microplastics into rivers, yet their transport distances within these waterways remain unknown. Herein, we developed a conceptual framework by synthesizing the microplastic data from the Yangtze River Basin to evaluate its transport distances, quantifying a significant spatial dependence between large-scale wastewater discharge and riverine microplastics ( < 0.05).