Groundings of drifters in the Wadden Sea inform  the transport of floating macroplastic

Schneiter, Marc Emanuel; Hut, Rolf; van Sebille, Erik

doi:10.5194/os-22-3595-2026

Articles | Volume 22, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-22-3595-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-22-3595-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 6

Research article

|

06 Nov 2026

Research article |

| 06 Nov 2026

Groundings of drifters in the Wadden Sea inform the transport of floating macroplastic

Marc Emanuel Schneiter, Rolf Hut, and Erik van Sebille

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-22-3595-2026-supplement

Data sets

Wadden Sea Drifter Trajectories 2023 E. van Sebille https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14199027

Hourly Data on Single Levels from 1940 to Present ERA5 https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47

Model code and software

mes-uu/Paper-Drifters-Groundings-Wadden-Sea-Floating-Macroplastic: Article Source-Code Marc Emanuel Schneiter https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17865410

Video supplement

Animations of preprocessed Stokes Drifters trajectories from Wadden Sea campaign of November 2023 Marc Emanuel Schneiter https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20321647

Short summary

We study the transport and land-water transitions of 24 small floating position-trackers that are representative of plastic litter, which we released in the Wadden Sea, a region strongly influenced by tides and wind. We describe how to automatically identify from their tracks whether a tracker is afloat or not, and relate the transitions between afloat and beached to sea and wind conditions. Our method can be used in model simulations and in the planning of beach cleanups.