High-Level Project Summary
Most of the plastic waste polluting the oceans is within ten kilometres of the coast. From the NASA aquatic data, we can draw spectral reflectance vs wavelength graphs and compute floating debris index and using this behaviour, we can mark polluted shorelines and 5 garbage patches and take actions.To save earth, we have to save the blue.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
As we delve into the cosmic arena, to us, this pale blue dot matters the most. This is earth where life is nourished as far as we know. The required specimens for life are here and it is in grave danger from its inhabitants.
The oxygen we inhale like almost all other living things is not granted for eternity. 70% of global oxygen supply comes from the ocean and we get it from phytoplankton. This massive source of oxygen and sea creatures are currently dying from our plastic pollution. We have to solve this problem before it creates something more disastrous.
We are team Joloj and we are trying to build a model to deal with this challenge.
Around 60% of the plastic produced is less dense than seawater. When introduced into the marine environment, buoyant plastic can be transported by surface currents and winds11, recaptured by coastlines, degraded into smaller pieces by the action of sun, temperature variations, waves and marine life10, or lose buoyancy and sink. A portion of these buoyant plastics however, is transported offshore and enters oceanic gyres. A considerable accumulation zone for buoyant plastic was identified in the eastern part of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.
This area has been described as ‘a gyre within a gyre’18 and commonly referred to as the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’. There are four other enormous garbage patches like this. These large rotating ocean currents entrain and accumulate floating plastic debris from coastlines and estuaries around the world and are now believed to contain 100 times more plastic than originally estimated.
A garbage patch is a gyre of marine debris particles caused by the effects of ocean currents and increasing plastic pollution by human populations. The plastic debris we are looking for are likely to be found more efficiently in these garbage patches. From the aquatic data from NASA MODIS and Landsat satellite, we can extract all the necessary data needed to mark these patches and to visualize these on google earth engine code. Then it is processed using image analysis and machine learning to find out where debris is more dense and thus we would have leverage over marine plastic debris.
Most of the plastic waste polluting the planet's oceans is within ten kilometres of the coast, rather than out on the open sea. Nasa satellite data can help us detect plastic waste on coastlines and if we are truly serious on this matter, we can stop this disaster before it happens.
The model we have thought, is not fault proof and we know it. But we are trying and we will continue to improve the algorithm. The ocean is in peril right now. Experts say that by 2050 there may be more plastic than fish in the sea, or perhaps only plastic left.
We have to start working on it more seriously. Earth is our home and we have to save it.
Space Agency Data
We have used datasets from NASA. We used MODIS aqua data.
Hackathon Journey
We are from different discipline but we are all passionate about the global plastic pollution. We were confused about using the data. Our journey on this challenge will continue as we want this problem to be solved.
References
NASA MODIS AQUA data
Google Earth Engine Code
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.