| Narrative summary of dataset | This dataset represents a part of the Danish national monitoring data for marine litter at reference beaches in Denmark 2020 and 2021. The purpose of the monitoring program is to provide systematical and comparable data for assessment of the state, impact and trends of marine litter and thereby comply with the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). National monitoring of marine litter at beaches was initiated in Denmark in 2015, and on request from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the monitoring activities involving these two beaches in the Baltic Sea are performed by DCE – Danish Centre for Environment and Energy.
The results of the monitoring surveys performed at these two beaches show that plastic comprised the majority of all beach litter items. The amounts of beach litter were in all regions above the EU threshold value of 20 litter items per 100 m beach length. Among some of the most common type of litter items were plastic pieces 2.5-50 cm, polystyrene pieces 2.5-50 cm and String and cord (diameter less than 1cm).
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| Summary of processing methodology | The monitoring surveys are systematically carried out according to the Danish technical guideline for beach litter monitoring (Strand & Metcalfe, 2016), which is based on the EU and OSPAR technical guidelines for beach litter monitoring (OSPAR, 2010) but with some national modifications (e.g. with subcategories for some specific litter items to provide a more detailed classification system). The beaches have been surveyed three times annually in spring, summer and autumn. As specified in the Danish technical guideline, the area for monitoring of beach litter is given by a specific 100 m stretch of the beach set by GPS mapping points, and the width is determined from the water line to the back of the beach.
The beach litter items collected during the surveys are counted and classified according to the national list of litter items (Strand & Metcalfe, 2016), which is largely based on the EU masterlist for litter codes (EU, 2013), but also with inclusion of some subcategories to perform a better classification of specific item types. In the present dataset, the number of litter items are registered using G codes, as also used in the MLW database. However, the Danish national litter list also contains a key for translation of litter items into OSPAR codes, so that items can be registered in both systems of G codes and OSPAR codes for beach litter.
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