RT journal article
T1 Focus on plastics from land to aquatic ecosystems
A1 van Emmerik, Tim
A1 González Fernández, Daniel
A1 Laufkötter, Charlotte
A1 Blettler, Martín
A1 Lusher, Amy
A1 Hurley, Rachel
A1 Ryan, Peter G
A2 Biología
K1 Aquatic ecosystems
K1 Biodegradable polymers
K1 Elastomers
K1 River pollution
K1 Rivers
K1 Urban growth
K1 Urban transportation
K1 Wastewater treatment
AB Plastic pollution in oceans and rivers is of growing concern. Aquatic ecosystems play an important role in transport and storage of plastic waste from land-based storage to riverine and marine environments. This focus issue brings together new insights on the sources, transport dynamics, fate, and impact of plastic pollution through aquatic environments. The work collected in this focus issue shows that urban areas, transportation infrastructure, and wastewater treatment plants are consistently identified as sources for micro-, meso-, and macroplastics. Transport dynamics of plastics over land and through rivers were found to be driven by human factors, flood and storm events, and hydrodynamics, and combinations thereof. Most plastics were found not to make it to the open sea, but rather beach, float in coastal waters, or accumulate on land and within river systems. When exposed to the environment, both conventional and biodegradable plastics degrade into smaller pieces. Yet, the degradation and fragmentation of plastics in the environment remain unresolved. Future work should focus on transferability of new river and region specific insights, collection and exploration of large-scale and novel datasets, source and entry point identification, and understanding fundamental transport mechanisms. This focus issue provides new insights on sources, transport, fate, and impact of plastics, but also emphasizes that need for further work on plastics in aquatic ecosystems.
PB Institute of Physics
SN 1748-9318
YR 2023
FD 2023-03-17
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/29674
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/29674
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 08-nov-2026