CNR-ISMAR

first_pagesettingsOrder Article Reprints Open AccessArticle Marine Litter Tracking System: A Case Study with Open-Source Technology and a Citizen Science-Based Approach by Silvia Merlino 1,*ORCID,Marina Locritani 2ORCID,Antonio Guarnieri 3ORCID,Damiano Delrosso 3,Marco Bianucci 1ORCID andMarco Paterni 4 1 CNR-ISMAR (Istituto di Scienze Marine-Sede di La Spezia), 19032 La Spezia, Italy 2 Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione di Roma 2, 00143 Roma, Italy 3 Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione di Bologna, 40127 Bologna, Italy 4 CNR-IFC (Istituto di Fisiologia Clinica-Pisa), 56124 Pisa, Italy * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Sensors 2023, 23(2), 935; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23020935 Received: 28 November 2022 / Revised: 9 January 2023 / Accepted: 10 January 2023 / Published: 13 January 2023 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Enabling Citizen Science in Communal Smart Environments with IoT Technology) Download Browse Figures Review Reports Versions Notes Abstract It is well established that most of the plastic pollution found in the oceans is transported via rivers. Unfortunately, the main processes contributing to plastic and debris displacement through riparian systems is still poorly understood. The Marine Litter Drifter project from the Arno River aims at using modern consumer software and hardware technologies to track the movements of real anthropogenic marine debris (AMD) from rivers. The innovative “Marine Litter Trackers” (MLT) were utilized as they are reliable, robust, self-powered and they present almost no maintenance costs. Furthermore, they can be built not only by those trained in the field but also by those with no specific expertise, including high school students, simply by following the instructions. Five dispersion experiments were successfully conducted from April 2021 to December 2021, using different types of trackers in different seasons and weather conditions. The maximum distance tracked was 2845 km for a period of 94 days. The activity at sea was integrated by use of Lagrangian numerical models that also assisted in planning the deployments and the recovery of drifters. The observed tracking data in turn were used for calibration and validation, recursively improving their quality. The dynamics of marine litter (ML) dispersion in the Tyrrhenian Sea is also discussed, along with the potential for open-source approaches including the “citizen science” perspective for both improving big data collection and educating/awareness-raising on AMD issues.

Il documento descrive i risultati due progetti di ricerca libera INGV (ML-DAR e ML-CSA) che hanno come obiettivo lo sviluppo di rifiuti marini tracciati a basso costo e lo studio del percorso che questi fanno allo sbocco dei fiumi in mare (il primo) con il coinvolgimento di volontari e studenti (il secondo).

A 2-year dataset of a stand-alone mooring, deployed in November 2020 down the Levante Canyon in the eastern Ligurian Sea, is presented. The Levante Canyon Mooring (LCM) is a deep submarine multidisciplinary observatory positioned at 608 m depth in a key ecosystem area. The Levante Canyon hosts a valuable and vulnerable ecosystem of deep-living cold-water corals (CWCs), studied and monitored since 2013 through integrated mapping of the seabed and water column. The 2-year dataset, acquired on the mooring and presented here (data from November 2020 to October 2022), includes measurements conducted with both current meters and conductivity–temperature–depth (CTD) probes and provides information about the hydrodynamics and thermohaline properties across almost the entire water column. The observatory is still ongoing, and the dataset is regularly updated. All the described data are publicly available from https://doi.org/10.17882/92236 (Borghini et al., 2022). They must therefore be preserved and are of considerable scientific interest.

Data on the abundance and distribution of Anthropogenic Marine Debris (AMD) on the coastal areas of the northern Tyrrhenian coast are still scarce. The objective of this study is to characterize, in terms of size, color, morphology and polymeric nature, the Large Microplastics (LMPs), i.e., plastic objects within 1 and 5 mm, sampled on three beaches located within the coastal macro-area of the Pelagos Sanctuary, an international protected zone in the north-western Mediterranean. The beaches have similar morphological characteristics but different degrees of urbanization. LMPs were sampled seasonally for one year. The polymeric nature of a representative subsample of the collected LMPs was investigated using a portable Raman instrument, to assess the feasibility of in situ characterization. In this study, 26,486 items were sorted by typology (Expanded Polystyrene-EPS, fragments, and resin pellets), size, and for fragments and resin pellets, also by color and chemical nature. Statistical data on the quantity, density, type, spatial distribution, and seasonality of the sampled LMPs are presented. Differences in LMP abundance and composition were detected among sites. A seasonality trend emerges from our statistical analysis, depending on both LMP typology and urbanization degrees of the beaches. Our data do not show the existence of a relationship between the size of the investigated MPs and their color, while they suggest that the type of polymer influences the degree of fragmentation. This underlines the need to further investigate the mechanisms leading to the production and dispersion of MPs in coastal areas, taking into account both the urbanization of the beach, and therefore the possible sources of input, and the different types of MPs. Finally, a Raman portable instrument proved to be a valuable aid in performing in situ polymeric characterization of LMPs.

L’inquinamento da plastica oggi rappresenta un problema ambientale a scala mondiale che si ripercuote su molti aspetti della nostra vita quotidiana e incide anche sulla nostra salute. La mostra temporanea La plastica e noi realizzata presso il Museo di Storia Naturale dell’Università di Pisa vuole sensibilizzare i cittadini e suggerire l’adozione di strategie più corrette di consumo e smaltimento di imballaggi e oggetti in plastica.

Climate change investigation, protection of marine ecosystems and mitigation of natural risks are the main research objectives of the Levante Canyon Mooring (LCM), a deep submarine multidisciplinary observatory, installed in September 2019 in the Eastern Ligurian Sea (Lat 44°05.443'N, Long 009°29.900'E at 608 m depth), inside the Pelagos Sanctuary. The observatory consists of a stand-alone station, with an instrumented mooring line ending with a submerged buoy. It operates in delayed-mode and is equipped with sensors that measure physical and biogeochemical parameters continuously and it is expected to provide data in the long-term. Temperature and salinity monitoring is carried out at three depth levels (about 80, 335 and 580 m depth), while turbidity is recorded at 580 m depth. LCM is also equipped with a sediment trap and two acoustic current profilers, able to measure direction and speed of currents in nearly the entire water column.Data will be used to measure flux of sediments, nutrients and organic matter and to better understand the hydrodynamic and physical conditions of the Levante Canyon, which hosts valuable and vulnerable ecosystems, such as the deep-living cold-water corals, identified by IIM and ENEA in 2014, near the LCM mooring site. The LCM site is also located in an area where surface currents are monitored in near-real time by the CNR's High Frequency Radar network, allowing data integration from multiplatform observations.The project, co-financed by the Liguria Region, is coordinated by the DLTM in strict collaboration, in terms of human resources, infrastructures and instruments with the associated public research bodies (CNR, ENEA, INGV) and with the IIM. The project also includes the next deployment of a cabled station in the Gulf of La Spezia (10 m depth, less than 100 m far from the coast) that will monitor the gravimetric field, temperature and marine current. The main objective of the coastal station is to provide a test site for new instruments and sensors.

The marine litter (ML) problem has growing, in the last years, the interest of people towards micro and macro plastic pollution. The scientific community intensified the studies on it, describing abundances, typologies and distribution in several pelagic and coastal areas, even thanks to the Marine Strategy Framework Directive addresses (MSFD), that defines ML as one of the 11 principal descriptors. SEACleaner project [Merlino et al., 2015a], developed by CNR-ISMAR in collaboration with INGV and Ligurian Cluster of Marine Technology (DLTM), since 2013 is monitoring coastal regions inside 5 Italian Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) surrounding the Pelagos Sanctuary. It borne as citizen science and educational project, and involves non-governmental organizations (NGOs), volunteers and high school students in beach surveys (Fig. 1). The used protocol has been implemented following the MSFD recommendation (Merlino et al., 2015a), and enables students and volunteers to easily count and classify the beached macro ML, overcoming the lack of current data on beached ML and, at the same time, providing correct information and raising public awareness of this problem. An assessing study [Locritani et al., 2019] highlights in fact that citizen science approaches increase knowledge and sensitiveness on the ML problem in students that participated to SEACleaner project. The scientific monitoring results obtained [Giovacchini et al., 2018], in 11 beaches located in 5 MPAs, highlights differences in the abundances and typologies of ML, depending on the proximity to the rivers and on the kind of the beach: Urban (in residential and touristic areas, cleaned on regular basis), Urbanized (close to urban centers, low human presence but less regular cleaning), Natural (MPAs restricted areas, not cleaning). In detail, Natural sites, and particularly MPAs close to river mouths, show a major density of macro ML compared to other areas, probably due to the lack of frequently cleaning activities. The prevalent typology of ML found in each beach is related to its “Urbanization” class, with Natural beaches showing the major percentage of plastic and the minor percentage of litter categories related with touristic presence. SEACleaner now focus on micro-plastic surveys (Fig. 2) in the same Area of previous macro ML study, to verify if the accumulation of macro-plastic on the beaches favors fragmentation and so micro-plastic generation, making less accessible MPAs as possible source of micro-plastics.

This paper provides a quantitative assessment of students' attitude and behaviors towards marine litter beforeand after their participation to SEACleaner, an educational and citizen science project devoted to monitor macro-and micro-litter in an Area belonging to “Pelagos Sanctuary” (Mediterranean Sea). This approach produced interesting outcomes both for the research sector of marine pollution and environmental monitoring, as well for the scientific and environmental education. Here we focus on citizen science as an effective vector for raising young people awareness of marine litter and fostering sound behaviors. A specially designed questionnaire was administered to 87 High School students, to test the validity of such approach. The results state that the students change quantitatively their perception of beach-litter causes and derived problems, and they improved their knowledge about the main marine litter sources and the role of the sea in the waste transport and deposition along the coast.

The overall objective of this proposal is to build an advanced and original prototype specifically devoted to seafloor and water-column monitoring as starting Italian contribution to the further development of the EMSO Ligurian Sea node. In detail the aim of the observatory is to ensure realtime continuous acquisition of geophysical, oceanographic and biological data by a cable system from a marine depth of about 500 m to the shore station.

In 2007 the Italian Ministry of Education identified the need of raising a new Humanism: students must receive adequate tools for knowledge, but must also understand and be able to handle the increasingly frequent transitions and changes they have to face as citizens and individuals. Orientation during the developmental phase must, hence, allow students to acquire all those key and context-independent competences, necessary for self-assessment of natural attitudes. Nevertheless, the label “new Humanism”, should not be the first step for giving even less importance to scientific education: there is no need to enhance the existing general lack of interest affecting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines and literature; moreover, the social importance of scientific and technological research can’t remain undervalued. All these issues are a matter of concern for the European Community and, in fact, the last European Directives concerning education and social development, are trying to redirect and enforce educational programmes towards a “knowledge-based society and economy” that will support the societal challenges of the 21st century and the growing demand of scientific expertise in all sectors (necessary for boosting European economic development). The most interesting strategies for implementing these directives are all those activities that see a wide partnership of schools with public institutions, enterprises and research centres (e.g. science festivals, competitions and internships for high school students). Recent studies, and the same recommendations of the European Community, have also shown that these activities, when included since the earliest years of primary schools, have a deeper impact in the long term as they match with the evolutive period in which intrinsic motivation is strongly present. This study is, hence, aimed to build an instrument able for understanding if all these kind of activities are effective in 2 increasing: (1) appreciation and interest towards scientific research and (2) number of young people considering a STEM career as a possible perspective for their future (the question is: ‘does Science make our hearts beat faster?’).