DOI: 10.13120/ba0cbc0f-9a0b-4dcd-bec2-c52156890ecd
title: Beach litter - Total abundance (number of items) of litter aggregated over a given period per beach - EU-MSFD monitoring 2001/2023 v2025
title: bl_tot_abundance_all_years_beach_monitoring

description: This visualization product displays the total abundance of marine macro-litter (&gt; 2.5cm) per beach, per 100m & to 1 survey aggregated over the period 2001 to 2023 from Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) monitoring surveys.

EMODnet Chemistry included the collection of marine litter in its 3rd phase. Since the beginning of 2018, data of beach litter have been gathered and processed in the EMODnet Chemistry Marine Litter Database (MLDB).
The harmonization of all the data has been the most challenging task considering the heterogeneity of the data sources, sampling protocols and reference lists used on a European scale.


Preliminary processings were necessary to harmonize all the data:
 - Exclusion of OSPAR 1000 protocol: in order to follow the approach of OSPAR that it is not including these data anymore in the monitoring;
 - Selection of MSFD surveys only (exclusion of other monitoring, cleaning and research operations);
 - Exclusion of beaches without coordinates;
 - Some categories & some litter types like organic litter, small fragments (paraffin and wax; items &gt; 2.5cm) and pollutants have been removed. The list of selected items is attached to this metadata (total abundance list). This list was created using EU Marine Beach Litter Baselines, the European Threshold Value for Macro Litter on Coastlines and the Joint list of litter categories for marine macro-litter monitoring from JRC (these three documents are attached to this metadata);
 - Normalization of survey lengths to 100m & 1 survey / year: in some cases, the survey length was not exactly 100m, so in order to be able to compare the abundance of litter from different beaches a normalization is applied using this formula:
 Number of items (normalized by 100 m) = Number of litter per items x (100 / survey length)
 Then, this normalized number of items is summed to obtain the total normalized number of litter for each survey. Finally, a median is calculated over the entire period among all these total numbers of litter per 100m calculated for each survey. 
 Sometimes the survey length was null or equal to 0. Assuming that the MSFD protocol has been applied, the length has been set at 100m in these cases.


The size of each circle on this map increases with the calculated median number of marine litter per beach, per 100m & to 1 survey.
The median litter abundance values displayed in the legend correspond to the 50 and 99 percentiles and the maximum value.

More information is available in the attached documents.


Warning:
- the absence of data on the map does not necessarily mean that they do not exist, but that no information has been entered in the Marine Litter Database for this area.
- This map was created to give an idea of the distribution of beach litter between 2001 and 2023 in a synthetic manner. NOT ALL BEACHES MAY HAVE DATA FOR THE ENTIRE PERIOD, SO IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO MAKE A COMPARISON BETWEEN BEACHES.