Cooperative Agreement for CESU-affiliated Partner with Gulf Coast Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit

The USGS Water Mission Area (WMA) Next Generation Water Observing System (NGWOS), is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for research and development of technology for microplastic detection and identification.  Microplastics, including microbeads, fragments, and fibers are defined as plastics smaller than 5 mm in size. Water pollution due to microplastics is a top emerging concern for ecological and human health. One of the challenges for microplastic data collection is that the analytical process is time-consuming (days to weeks), labor-intensive, costly (equipment plus labor), and baseline data are limited. A low-cost portable sensor that can be deployed at testing fields with multiple sensing modalities and edge computing capabilities for microplastic identification is of interest to NGWOS. A reliable and low-cost microplastic sensor would be beneficial to the WMA and the water monitoring community.