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PLASTYX: Microplastics in groundwater ecosystems: a global impact analysis
Project lead: Professor Anne Robertson
The total quantity, spatial distribution, residence time scales and most importantly the impact of microplastics on groundwater ecosystems, and the vital services they provide to humans, are completely unknown. There is a vital need to investigate the role of groundwater as a long-term sink for plastic pollution, including their legacy risks and impacts on the largest freshwater ecosystems on earth.
Work Package 4: Global modelling to identify the environmental relevance of microplastic pollution in groundwater
Rationale
Surface loadings and sub-surface transit times of microplastics are highly variable; currently it is unknown whether the few records of microplastics in groundwater represent an ‘advance guard’ or the peak of microplastic pollution. Global groundwater models indicate substantial regional variability in groundwater recharge rates, which together with the spatial patterns of plastic waste on the Earth surface will affect when and where microplastic peaks will arrive in groundwater, and what levels of pollution they will cause. Despite new global models for predicting MP transport and transformation in river networks, analogous predictive capacity for microplastics in groundwater does not yet exist, hampering the ability to assess, manage and mitigate the risks of groundwater aquifers as microplastic sinks.
Research Question
How will spatial patterns of global groundwater microplastic pollution change in the future as a function of surface inputs of microplastics, aquifer transport properties and variability in regional groundwater recharge?
Objective
Develop a global model to identify environmental relevance and predict trends of groundwater microplastic pollution.
Methods
We will quantify current levels of global microplastic accumulation in groundwater aquifers and identify the spatial patterns and future trends of microplastic aquifer inputs through groundwater recharge using an integrated groundwater and particle tracking model. This will be locally validated based on site specific observations of groundwater microplastic concentrations derived from WP1, allowing for parameter optimization and uncertainty assessment. Application of the model for simulating spatial distributions of microplastic accumulation in groundwater will produce global ‘heat maps’ of microplastic accumulation and identify hotspots of microplastic concentrations in groundwater. Global budgets of total groundwater microplastic mass will be derived for current conditions and microplastic groundwater pollution predicted for 50, 100 and 200 years’ time using predicted future inputs from the literature.
Work Package lead
Professor Stefan Krause
s.krause@bham.ac.uk
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