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Soil Biochemical Indicators to Monitor the Impact of Microplastics on Soil Functionality in Terrestrial Ecosystems
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This paper reviews how soil biochemical indicators — including enzyme activities and microbial community metrics — can be used to assess the impact of microplastics on soil functioning. Because standard chemical analyses alone may miss functional changes, biochemical indicators provide a more sensitive early warning system for detecting microplastic-driven soil health degradation.
The present paper introduces soil as a complex system, so a multidisciplinary approach is needed to study not only the composition, abundance, and transport of microplastics (MPs) in terrestrial ecosystems but also soil properties and processes involved in their degradation and/or interaction with soil polyphasic matrix. Despite many researchers focusing their studies on the impact of MPs on the terrestrial ecosystem over the past years, little has been done about the use of biochemical indicators to study their effect on soil functionality.
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