气候变化领域集成服务门户(CCPortal): A spatially variable scarcity of floating microplastics in the eastern North Pacific Ocean

CCPortal

DOI	10.1088/1748-9326/abbb4f
	A spatially variable scarcity of floating microplastics in the eastern North Pacific Ocean
	Egger M.; Nijhof R.; Quiros L.; Leone G.; Royer S.-J.; McWhirter A.C.; Kantakov G.A.; Radchenko V.I.; Pakhomov E.A.; Hunt B.P.V.; Lebreton L.
发表日期	2020
ISSN	17489318
卷号	15 期号:11
英文摘要	Plastic waste accumulating in the global ocean is an increasingly threatening environmental issue. To date, the floating and thus most visible fraction of ocean plastic pollution has been mapped at global scale. Yet, large knowledge gaps exist in our current understanding of the transport and transformation processes of positively buoyant plastic debris at the sea surface. Observations at sea typically report an apparent scarcity of microplastics (<5 mm) relative to the expected abundance-size distribution based on fragmentation of larger plastic objects. Here, we provide a comprehensive study on the relative abundance of microplastics (>500 µm) and mesoplastics (0.5-5 cm) in the surface waters of the eastern North Pacific Ocean using data from 1136 040 plastic fragments collected by 679 neuston trawl deployments between 2015 and 2019. Our results reveal that the apparent microplastic scarcity is not uniformly distributed across the region. Instead, we show that the relative abundance of floating microplastics increases from the outside to the inside of the North Pacific Garbage Patch. We hypothesize that this observation could be explained by (i) a spatially variable microplastic removal due to spatial differences in ocean productivity, (ii) a differential dispersal of micro- vs. mesoplastics with a preferential accumulation of microplastics in the subtropical gyre, and/or (iii) the timescales associated with transport and fragmentation of plastic objects at the ocean surface with older, more degraded, floating plastic accumulation in subtropical gyres. The results presented here highlight that global estimates of the accumulation and removal of positively buoyant microplastics need to consider spatial aspects such as variations in ocean productivity, the dominant physical transport processes in a given area, as well as the time needed for a plastic object to reach the specific offshore location. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.
英文关键词	marine debris; microplastics; North Pacific Garbage Patch; ocean plastic pollution
语种	英语
scopus关键词	Buoyancy; Fisheries; Microplastic; Offshore oil well production; Plastics industry; Productivity; River pollution; Surface waters; Tropics; Eastern north pacific; Environmental issues; Offshore locations; Physical transport; Plastic pollutions; Relative abundance; Spatial differences; Transport and transformation; Oceanography; plastic waste; pollutant transport; spatial variation; Pacific Ocean; Pacific Ocean (North)
来源期刊	Environmental Research Letters
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/153495
作者单位	Ocean Cleanup Foundation, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Department of Earth Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands; Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, CA, United States; Center for Marine Debris Research, Hawai'i Pacific UniversityHI, United States; Far-Eastern Ecological Centre, Ltd., Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russian Federation; Pacific Branch of Vniro (TINRO), Vladivostok, Russian Federation; North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission, Vancouver, BC, Canada; Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; Hakai Institute, Heriot bay, BC, Canada; Modelling House Limited, Raglan, New Zealand
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Egger M.,Nijhof R.,Quiros L.,et al. A spatially variable scarcity of floating microplastics in the eastern North Pacific Ocean[J],2020,15(11).
APA	Egger M..,Nijhof R..,Quiros L..,Leone G..,Royer S.-J..,...&Lebreton L..(2020).A spatially variable scarcity of floating microplastics in the eastern North Pacific Ocean.Environmental Research Letters,15(11).
MLA	Egger M.,et al."A spatially variable scarcity of floating microplastics in the eastern North Pacific Ocean".Environmental Research Letters 15.11(2020).