Coupling beach ecology and macroplastics litter studies: Current trends and the way ahead

As sites of floating marine material deposition, sandy beaches accumulate marine litter. While research and assessment on beach litter is increasing and involves various actors (scientists, society and NGOs), there is the need to assess current and future dominant trends, directions and priorities in that research. As such, a textural co-occurrence analysis was applied to published scientific literature. Words were considered both singly and as part of compound terms related to concepts relevant to sandy beach ecology: morphodynamic state; Littoral Active Zone; indicator fauna. Litter as a compound term was also included. The main co-occurrences were found within compounds, with scarce interaction of “morphodynamic state” with the others, indicating the need for further integration of beach ecology paradigms into beached plastics studies. Three approaches are proposed to overcome the research limits highlighted: the unequivocation of terms, the consideration of adequate scales, and the attention to dynamics rather than just patterns.