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Microplastics in Como Creek, Green Lake 4, and Solifluction Lobes 2023.
Summary
Researchers sampled three surface water sites within the Niwot Long-Term Ecological Research area in Colorado's Front Range for atmospheric microplastic deposition, finding microplastics in these remote high-altitude ecosystems and calling for expanded monitoring as warming climates may increase deposition rates.
Microplastics are known to persist in remote regions of the Colorado Front Range through atmospheric deposition. Although plastics are introduced by wet deposition, high rates of deposition are driven by dry deposition. With a warming climate, microplastic deposition may increase with unknown consequences for the ecological health of remote ecosystems. To assess the risk of microplastic distribution in remote regions, monitoring of environmental compartments is needed. To this end, we sampled three surface waters within the Niwot LTER for microplastics using a peristaltic in-line filtration sampling pump.