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. 2023 Oct 20;10(1):726.
doi: 10.1038/s41597-023-02632-y.

The NOAA NCEI marine microplastics database

Ebenezer S Nyadjro  1   2 , Jennifer A B Webster  3 , Tim P Boyer  4 , Just Cebrian  5   3   6 , Leonard Collazo  3   7 , Gunnar Kaltenberger  3   7 , Kirsten Larsen  3 , Yee H Lau  5   3 , Paul Mickle  5   3 , Tiffany Toft  3   7 , Zhankun Wang  4
Affiliations

The NOAA NCEI marine microplastics database

Ebenezer S Nyadjro et al. Sci Data. .

Abstract

Microplastics (<5 mm) pollution is a growing problem affecting coastal communities, marine ecosystems, aquatic life, and human health. The widespread occurrence of marine microplastics, and the need to curb its threats, require expansive, and continuous monitoring. While microplastic research has increased in recent years and generated significant volumes of data, there is a lack of a robust, open access, and long-term aggregation of this data. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) now provides a global open access to marine microplastics data on an easily discoverable and accessible GIS web map and data portal ( https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/microplastics ). The objective of this data portal is to develop a repository where microplastics data are aggregated, archived, and served in a user friendly, consistent, and reliable manner. This work contributes to NCEI's efforts towards data standardization, integration, harmonization, and interoperability among national and international collaborators for monitoring global marine microplastics. This paper describes the NOAA NCEI global marine microplastics database, its creation, quality control procedures, and future directions.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Number of microplastic publications between 1964–2022.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
An example of a screenshot from an archived dataset collected in the Southern Ocean from 2016-11-28 to 2017-07-27, showing detailed information on how the data was collected, quality-controlled and analyzed. (Credit: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/archive/accession/0253447).
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
A screenshot showing the NOAA NCEI microplastic database GIS web portal with microplastic concentrations.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Number of microplastic records in the NOAA NCEI database.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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