Ecosystem level impacts of plastic pollution

Abstract

The plastic lifecycle intersects with critical global challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution across soil, air, and water systems. Despite extensive research into the sources, pathways, distributions, and impacts of plastic pollution, particularly within marine environments, significant knowledge gaps persist. Regions experiencing severe mismanaged waste and plastic leakage, often associated with ecological sensitive habitats, remain particularly under-studied. Additionally, data fragmentation and methodological inconsistencies impede comparative analyses, while limited technical and financial capacity constrains efforts to monitor pollutants and assess their effects on human and environmental health. This study addresses some of these gaps by identifying accessible methods for quantifying marine plastic pollution and assessing potential ecosystem-level impacts across lower and higher trophic level communities. Key objectives included reviewing current knowledge on ecosystem-level effects related to the plastic life cycle, evaluating existing monitoring initiatives, and identifying policy-orientated research gaps from an academic perspective. Considering fieldwork limitations due to COVID-19, the study investigated existing and innovative, cost-effective techniques to promote a comprehensive and inclusive approach towards monitoring marine anthropogenic pollution. First, an experiment was designed to examine the effects of surface macroplastic loads and associated communities on ambient lower trophic level communities. This resulted in a simple and reproducible method for quantifying the potential impact of plastic- associated communities on local ecosystems and productivity. Second, a global isotope dataset was utilised to evaluate the feasibility of detecting pollution loading, specifically anthropogenic nitrogen, in the physiology of higher trophic level organisms. This represents the first application of this approach, supporting further investigation into the use of global mesopredatory elasmobranchs as indicators of anthropogenic pollution. Finally, a rapid marine litter assessment was conducted around the UK to quantify beach litter, comparing outputs from two widely applied monitoring approaches. While findings demonstrated strong similarities, notable site-level differences were observed.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Clive Trueman: orcid.org/0000-0002-4995-736X

ORCID for Andy Cundy: orcid.org/0000-0003-4368-2569

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