Title of the dataset:
River plastic measurements in the Rhine, Odaw and Mekong 2021-2022

Creators:
Tim van Emmerik
Louise Schreyers

Contributors:
Sabrina Kirschke, Shuvojit Nath, Christian Schmidt, Katrin Wendt-Potthoff, Rose Pinto, Linda Bogerd, Kwame Duah, Yvette Mellink, Ty Sok, Boaz Kuizenga

Related publication:
Estimating plastic pollution levels in rivers through harmonized monitoring strategies

Description:
We measured floating plastic in the Rhine (Netherlands to Switzerland), Odaw (Ghana) and Mekong (Cambodia) rivers using visual counting from bridges. We also measured riverbank and terrestrial plastic density in the Odaw river through physical sampling and classification.

We measured river plastic pollution in three rivers across relevant gradients, including geography, hydrology, and plastic pollution levels. In the Rhine basin (Switzerland, France, Germany, the Netherlands) we showed that urban areas and tributaries may act as entry points of plastic pollution. For the Odaw basin (Ghana) we compared floating, terrestrial and riverbank plastics, identifying source and accumulation zones. Finally, in the Mekong river (Cambodia) we quantified the contribution of the city of Phnom Penh to plastic pollution through quantifying the plastic mass balance in the Mekong-Tonle Sap-Bassac region.

Keywords:
Plastic pollution
Macroplastic
Microplastic
Hydrology
Rivers

Spatial coverage:
Rhine from the Netherlands to Switzerland, the Odaw from river mouth to upstream, and the Mekong around Phnom Penh in Cambodia.

Temporal coverage:
December, 2021 to March, 2022

This dataset contains the following files:
DatasetRhine_UNEP.xlsx
DatasetOdaw_UNEP.xlsx
DatasetMekong_UNEP.xlsx
unep_report.ipynb

Explanation files:
The three Excel fils contain the obsevations from the Rhine, Odaw and Mekong rivers. The Jupyter Notebook file contains the code used for the analysis and visualization of the data.

Explanation of variables:
Bridge width: total width of the brigde [m].
Segment: segment on the bridge (3 to 12, depending on the bridge).
Segment width: width of the obesrved segment [m].
Duration: duration of the measurement [min].
PET...Other: counted items belonging to that categoryduring the measurement.
Total counted: Total counted items during the measurement.
Item flux: Normalized item flux in items/min, items/hour, items/hour/m.
Extrapolated items/hour: normalized item flux extrapolated to hourly values and to the total river width.


This dataset is published under the CC BY (Attribution) license.
This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator.