NOAA Contributes to EUROqCHARM Final Project Meeting
OCT. 23, 2023 — During the week of October 9, the NOAA Marine Debris Program’s Chief Scientist, Amy V. Uhrin, attended and presented at the final meeting of EUROqCHARM. This European consortium of 15 partners received an award from Horizon 2020, the largest EU Research and Innovation program, to analyze and evaluate existing methodologies for plastic pollution assessment, and harmonize them on a European level. The meeting was held at the Norwegian Embassy in Brussels, Belgium, given that the project’s lead partner is the Norwegian Institute for Water Research. Dr. Uhrin has served as a member of the project’s Scientific Advisory Board since 2020.
At the meeting, Dr. Uhrin presented on NOAA’s Marine Debris Monitoring Assessment Project (MDMAP), specifically focusing on the Marine Debris Program’s recent collaboration with Western Ecosystems Technology (WEST) in developing a statistically-grounded survey design for conducting a baseline assessment for shoreline marine debris at a national scale. Her presentation also highlighted the need to consider the design of long-term monitoring programs in the context of the basic tenets of question-driven ecological field experimental design.