Marine Litter Viewing and Downloading Service - European Marine Observation and Data Network Chemistry
Original (non-English) name
Acronym
Marine Litter Viewing and Downloading Service - EMODnet Chemistry
Citation
Abstract
The first pan European Marine Litter Database (MLDB) has been developed by EMODnet Chemistry. The database contains data of beach and sea floor litter from a variety of sources, including existing International and Regional Sea Conventions, and data submitted by EU Member States, EMODnet partners and external research or monitoring projects. A majority of datasets were provided by existing monitoring projects which have published their data in project specific databases (i.e., OSPAR, ICES DATRAS). These databases may hold more and differently formatted information than is provided here, so direct comparison with these sources is not always possible.
Marine Litter Visualization Products are available through the Viewing and Downloading Service. The first release of the products include maps showing beach and sea floor surveys locations and summarized metrics of the MLDB content. Beach litter maps include temporal coverage of surveys, beach litter distribution (mean abundance per year) and beach litter composition (litter material categories in percentages). Sea floor litter maps show information about the fishing gear used, litter distribution along trawls (density as items/km2) and litter composition (material categories in percentages). Maps illustrating the distribution of relevant litter types are available for both beach litter (cigarette related items, fishing related items and plastic bags) and sea floor (fishing related items and plastic bags). Read more at: http://www.emodnet-chemistry.eu/marinelitter