Lead institution:
Federal University of Santa Catarina – Brazil
The SensNexus project will connect the presence of particulate plastic waste with sea pollution through an efficient, fast, cheap, digital, reproducible, easy-to-use tool, with fewer extraction steps to generate information on the distribution of nano and microplastics in mangrove, dunes, and coastal soils.
Oceans are key to storing carbon, supplying oxygen, stabilizing the climate, and producing food resources. However, paradoxically to their importance and our knowledge of the role of the oceans – we have never treated them so badly. Materials such as rubber, glass, textiles, and plastic enter our oceans in the most varied quantities, shapes, sizes, and types, which generates an estimated economic cost, just for plastic waste, between 3,000 and 33,000 dollars per ton/ year. Our objective is to propose a protocol for detecting the presence of nano and microplastics in coastal soils, using Proximal Soil Sensing technology, to generate a database of the distribution of marine pollution.
Start date: 03/01/2023
End date: 28/02/2026
Lead Contact: Alexandre ten Caten (ten.caten@ufsc.br)