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Plastic delivery from river to sea: Experiments on transport processes
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This experimental study investigated transport processes that carry plastic debris from rivers to the sea, including hydraulic transport, fragmentation, and biological fouling. Researchers quantified how various physical processes affect the fate of plastic particles in riverine and coastal environments.
The world-wide plastic production is literally exploded in the last fifty years, and more than half of the produced plastic is discarded in the environment. The rivers are the main vectors of the microplastic particles towards the oceans. This phenomenon is causing a variety of environmental impacts due to the degradation of plastic particle in the aquatic habitat (weathering, fragmentation, biofouling, etc.), also affecting the quantity of plastic transported and delivered to oceans. Moreover, plastic particles have different characteristics than fluvial sediment: for these reasons the transport processes of these particles in rivers are not known and need to be deeply investigated. The focus of this work is mainly on the settling velocity of plast.
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Researchers proposed and tested an experimental methodology for quantifying macroplastic fragmentation during river transport by conducting repeated mass measurements of tagged plastic items before and after riverine transport over 52-65 days. They found measurable mass loss from fragmentation, providing the first direct field quantification of riverine macroplastic fragmentation rates and supporting the hypothesis that river channels are hotspots for plastic breakdown.
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