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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Tour.
Sec. Tourism, Climate and Global Environmental Consequences
Volume 3 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frsut.2024.1371270
This article is part of the Research Topic UN World Environment Day 2023: Sustainable Tourism and the Global Waste and Plastic Crisis View all articles

Participatory mapping of transboundary pollution: The case of Imperial Beach, California

Provisionally accepted
Carol Maione Carol Maione 1,2,3*Gabriela Fernandez Gabriela Fernandez 1,2Domenico Vito Domenico Vito 1,2
  • 1 San Diego State University, San Diego, United States
  • 2 Metabolism of Cities Living Lab, Center for Human Dynamics in the Mobile Age, San Diego State University, San Diego, United States
  • 3 Polytechnic University of Milan, Milan, Lombardy, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Transboundary pollution is a major global challenge as its sources, causes, and movement remains unknown and unsurveyed. Monitoring beach litter along international borders can reveal some of the pathways by which litter enters water bodies, and hence advance the implementation of measures to prevent pollution emissions into international waters. In this paper, participatory mapping was used to detect beach litter in Imperial Beach, California, along the U.S.-Mexico international border. This study implemented a 3-step protocol including an introductory awareness workshop, a macro-debris survey to categorize and remove beach litter, and a qualitative assessment of pollution drivers. Results show that plastic litter is the most dominant across all transects (304 debris, 52.6% of all litter observations), with an average density of 76 pieces/transect, with plastic tableware, wrappings, and polystyrene being the most common materials. Participants identified some of the major causes of pollution with paucity of waste management facilities, tourism activities near/on the beach, and inflow of pollution across the border.

    Keywords: Beach litter, Participatory mapping, citizen science, Pollution monitoring, Imperial Beach

    Received: 16 Jan 2024; Accepted: 29 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Maione, Fernandez and Vito. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Carol Maione, San Diego State University, San Diego, United States

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