What is the River-OSPAR Plastics Dataset?

Tool/Dataset: River-OSPAR Plastics Dataset and codebase (GitHub + Zenodo)
Publication: The Shapes and Sizes of Macroplastics and Other Litter in Rivers (Lofty et al., ES&T)

The River-OSPAR Plastics Dataset is an open, analysis-ready dataset that converts River-OSPAR category inventories into physical and geometric property distributions—including mass, volume, density, and three principal dimensions – so river macrolitter can be treated like a physically parameterized particle population rather than just a list of item types.

The River-OSPAR Plastics Dataset designed to answer questions like:

• What shapes and sizes dominate river macrolitter globally?

• Which litter categories should transport models prioritize?

• What mesh sizes / trap geometries should cleanup tech target?

What makes the River-OSPAR Plastics Dataset special

Converts River-OSPAR “types” into physics-ready inputs

The publication compiles River-OSPAR inventories across studies/sites and maps them to physical–structural properties, enabling size distributions, shape descriptors, and material density ranges to be used directly in modeling and design.

Includes an estimated third dimension (L3) + shape descriptors

A key methodological gap in many inventories is missing thickness/short axis; this work estimates L3 and derives shape metrics (e.g., elongation/flatness-style ratios) to classify dominant macrolitter geometries.

License & attribution

The archived dataset release on Zenodo is published under CC BY 4.0, meaning you can reuse it with proper attribution.

Tags

River plastics; Macroplastics; River-OSPAR; Litter monitoring; Cleanup technology; Size distribution; Shape metrics; Transport modeling; Open dataset;