Predicting marine litter accumulation patterns in the Mediterranean basin: Spatio-temporal variability and comparison with empirical data

Abstract

The Mediterranean Sea is now acknowledged to be a hot spot for marine litter. However, little is known about Floating Macro Litter (FML) concentration at the scale of the entire basin; predictions regarding this would greatly help guide policymaking to fight this scourge. While previous studies have shown high spatio-temporal variability in FML distribution, the aim of this study was to accurately identify seasonal debris accumulation patterns on regional and local spatial scales across the Mediterranean basin. The objective was then to quantitatively compare this distribution model to other simulations and empirical data. We first studied FML distribution with a 2-D Lagrangian model coupled to an oceanic general circulation model (OGCM) at a horizontal resolution of 1/12°. From an initial homogeneous deployment, we deployed a set of >108 virtual particles across the whole basin and tracked each particle during 3-month journeys. Then we described the FML distribution model outputs and compared them both to empirical observations at the scale of the whole basin (gathered from a review of scientific papers on surface debris distribution), and to other numerical FML simulations from previous studies. The results of our offshore modeled distribution of FML fully agreed with characteristic debris accumulation patterns analyzed in our review of other studies. This indicates that our model could allow the prediction of monthly litter accumulation patterns at the scale of the entire Mediterranean Sea.