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The
NALG/EA Survey
The
survey is a visual survey only - it does not involve handling litter
in anyway.
The survey is carried out over a standard sampling unit on the beach
consisting of a 100 metre wide transect of the beach along the highest
water strandline and the area between this line and the current high
water strandline (up to a maximum width of 50 metres). Basically it
is a box marked out on the beach!
A count of litter items within the box are recorded according to the
following categories: ·
-
Sewage Related Litter and Debris
-
Potentially Harmful litter items
-
Gross Litter
-
General Litter (Sweet wrapppers, drinks cans, fast food cartons etc.)
-
Accumulations of litter
-
Oil pollution
-
Faeces of non-human origin (dogs).
-
Full details of how to carry out the survey are available in the Toolkit download.
Classification
The classification scheme is based on four grades A to D.
These
describe the quality of the beach as:
A
= Very Good
B
= Good
C = Fair
D = Poor
The
final grade assigned to a beach is the worst grade of the individual
grades for each parameter. For example, if a beach produces Grade A
for all categories apart from General Litter, which produces a B, then
the overall grade will be B. Litter items are graded on the numbers
counted in each category, the classification for this was the product
of a partnership of experts on the National Aquatic Litter Group. The
good news is that our survey database makes all of these calculations
when you submit your data over the web. Click here to view the classification
scheme. It really is very simple and the whole survey process should
not take you any longer than 1hr.
