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MPGRIDS v1.01
Summary
Scientists have created detailed global maps showing where microplastics are entering farm soil through organic fertilizers (like compost and manure) across 186 countries. This matters because microplastics in soil can end up in the crops we eat, and these maps help researchers and food safety officials pinpoint which farming regions may have higher contamination risks—an important first step toward understanding how plastic pollution might be entering our food supply.
We distribute in MPGRIDS georeferenced NetCDF formatted (.NC) maps of estimated Organic Matter (OM) amendments to organic farmlands and microplastics (MP) concentration in OM as a source of MP contamination in agricultural soil. We also distribute georeferenced maps of the annual MP inputs per unit crop surface area and in individual georeferenced grid cell (Table 1). The geospatial maps have 0.05 degree resolution (i.e., ~5.55 km at the equator) and a bounding box of (-180W, 180E) in longitude and (-90S, 90N) in latitude in WGS84 coordinate system. Similarly, all georeferenced maps are distributed also in Portable Network Graphic (.PNG) format for ease of visualization. In addition, we distribute all variables above as nationally aggregated values in tabular form as .XLSX formatted files. MPGRIDS coves 186 countries globally, and refers to circa year 2015 (years of source data ranges between 2005 and 2024). Methods of derivation of MPGRIDS are fully described in the associated manuscript Maggi et al., (2025), SDATA.