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For plastic detection, characterisation and tracking, we need rich spectral information, ideally hyperspectral data. We would like hyperspectral data up to short-wave infrared (2500 nm) and around 0.5 m ground sample distance. Neither of these characteristics are existent in current Earth observation missions, and will still be difficult to find in future Earth observation missions.

The project, named in short 'Plastic Monitor', was part of the ESA Discovery Campaign on Remote Sensing of Plastic Marine Litter, funded by the Discovery element of ESA’s Basic Activities. Plastic Monitor aimed to assess the feasibility of detecting heavy plastic pollution loads in an Indonesian river using satellite imagery and ground truth data, and to demonstrate how remote sensing can enhance the quantification and monitoring of plastic input into the marine environment.

The specific objectives of the project were to:

In the ocean, transport and mixing processes tend to disperse matter in suspension over wide spatial (~100 km) and long temporal (~month) scales. Fronts appear at the boundary between water masses with different properties and are caused by diverse oceanic features and processes, including bottom topography. Frontal structures include tidal mixing fronts, shelf-break fronts, upwelling fronts, estuarine fronts, plume fronts, fronts generated by convergence or divergence of water masses, and frontal eddies (Acha et al. 2015; Largier 1993).

The overall goal of the TRACE project was to build a remote sensing based fully automated system for the detection and tracking of large marine litter and accumulation patches of smaller litter items in order to obtain precise and reliable data on floating macro-litter regarding their quantity, position, accumulation zones, material properties, floating depth, and sources. The tracking mechanism has been implemented by coupling the daily satellite-based detections with an oceanographic forecasting system and by a two-step object matching approach.