Chosen theme: Life on Earth Team members’ names: Luca Borrelli; Camilla Stefani Organization Name: Liceo Scientifico Leonardo Da Vinci (Trento) Country: Italy
During our experiment, we wanted to see whether we could individuate plastic islands in the oceans.When plastic enters the oceans, more than half is less dense than water, so it doesn’t sink. Plastic is very resistant and it can be transported over extended distances by converging currents and finally accumulating in “islands” (1).
Those islands are very big, one of them, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, situated in the Pacific ocean, covers an estimated area of 1.6 million square kilometres, an area three times the size of France (1). Despite this, such islands are really difficult to locate from the space, because plastics are very small and scattered.
By researching information in internet, we have individuated a range of coordinates where those islands approximately are (3). Unfortunately, they are not stationary, and move across the oceans changing form and size due to currents and winds.
To individuate plastic, the NDVI index can be useful to calculate the quantity of infrared rays that is reflected in a single pixel of the photo. This index is specific for detecting healthy vegetation, but it was also used to individuate plastic in coastal water by Biermann et al. (2)
- UMap (click on the dots to display pics)
- All ISS data