Attribution of Plastic Sources Using Bayesian Inference: Application to River-Sourced Floating Plastic in the South Atlantic Ocean

Attribution of Plastic Sources Using Bayesian Inference: Application to River-Sourced Floating Plastic in the South Atlantic Ocean

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Most marine plastic pollution originates on land.However, once plastic is at sea, it is difficult to determine its origin.Here we present a Bayesian inference framework to compute the probability that a piece of plastic found at sea came from a particular source.This framework combines information about plastic emitted by rivers with a Lagrangian simulation, and yields maps indicating the probability cnd field fox that a particle sampled somewhere in the ocean originates from a particular river source.We showcase the framework for floating river-sourced plastic released into the South Atlantic Ocean.

We computed the probability as a function of the particle age at three locations, showing how probabilities vary according to the location and age.We computed the source probability of beached particles, showing that plastic found at a ego qv dermcare eczema daily wash 1kg given latitude is most likely to come from the closest river source.This framework lays the basis for source attribution of marine plastic.