The Danish Ministry of Environment and Energy initiated the national monitoring programme using the environmental indicator "microplastic" so that it can be used for the national implementation of EU's Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) in relation to Descriptor 10, for assessments of characteristics, state, impact and trends of litter in the marine environment.
The data provider, the Danish Centre for Environment and Energy (DCE), is Aarhus University's unit for knowledge exchange within the areas of nature, environment, climate and energy. Under the scientific assessment Report No. 178, the DCE describes the results of the national monitoring programme on microplastic contents and composition in sediments collected in the inner Danish waters in 2015.
The Ingestion team supported the data provider throughout the whole data submission process, including data and metadata formatting and the organisation of data in a relational structure. The main challenges were to convince the data provider to allocate the necessary time for the data preparation and submission, and to database the dataset according to the EMODnet guidelines. The efforts for the data publication were largely outweighed by the fact that the DCE can then use EMODnet Ingestion structures and services: (i) as a repository for stocking data and metadata, (ii) as an add-on to the national monitoring programme on microplastic, (ili) for organising and presenting the data in a relational, databased format, (iv) for generating data products on a European scale, and publishing the data and data products for Marine litter to EMODnet Chemistry.
