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61,005 resultsShowing papers similar to Microplastics and Climate Change: Unveiling Ecological Impacts and Addressing Research Gaps
ClearMicroplastics and Climate Change: Unveiling Ecological Impacts and Addressing Research Gaps
This review synthesizes research from 2019 to 2024 on the mechanisms by which microplastics influence greenhouse gas emissions — including CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide — in terrestrial and aquatic environments, examining roles such as nutrient adsorption and microbial substrate provision. The authors highlight the particularly underexplored contribution of nitrous oxide, which has a global warming potential approximately 300 times that of CO2, and call for standardized methodologies and long-term field studies to assess cumulative climate impacts.
The impact of microplastics and nanoplastics on biological nitrogen removal processes: Exacerbating the greenhouse effect
This review examines how microplastics and nanoplastics accumulate in wastewater treatment plants and interfere with the biological processes that remove nitrogen from water. The disruption leads to increased emissions of nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas, making the problem both an environmental health concern and a climate issue. The findings suggest that microplastic contamination in wastewater is undermining treatment effectiveness while simultaneously contributing to global warming.
Emerging challenges of microplastic impacts to ecological health and climate change
This review examines how microplastics contribute not only to environmental pollution but also to climate change by altering microbial processes, disrupting biogeochemical cycles, and promoting greenhouse gas release. Researchers found that microplastics affect carbon cycling, phytoplankton photosynthesis, and atmospheric processes in ways that may exacerbate global warming. The study highlights significant knowledge gaps in understanding the mechanisms linking microplastic pollution to greenhouse gas emissions.
A review of microplastics stress on nitrogen conversion and nitrous oxide emissions from biological wastewater treatment: Efficiency, mechanism and prospects
This review analyzes how microplastics affect nitrogen conversion processes and nitrous oxide emissions during biological wastewater treatment. Researchers found that microplastics can disrupt key nitrogen-cycling steps including nitrification and denitrification, potentially increasing emissions of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. The study highlights the dual environmental concern of microplastics interfering with both water treatment efficiency and climate-relevant gas emissions.
Effects of microplastics on microbial community and greenhouse gas emission in soil: A critical review
This review examines how microplastics in soil affect microbial communities and greenhouse gas emissions, finding that microplastics can alter the abundance and activity of soil bacteria in ways that increase carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide release. The plastics change soil structure and chemistry, creating conditions that favor certain gas-producing microbes over others. These effects could worsen climate change while also disrupting soil fertility, with indirect consequences for food production.
[Advances in the Effects of Microplastics on Soil N2O Emissions and Nitrogen Transformation].
This review synthesizes current research on how microplastics affect soil nitrogen cycling, including N2O emissions, nitrogen transformation processes, functional enzyme activity, and nitrogen-related genes, highlighting inconsistent findings due to variability in microplastic properties, experimental conditions, and spatial-temporal scales.
Microplastics in agricultural soil: Unveiling their role in shaping soil properties and driving greenhouse gas emissions
This review examines how microplastics in agricultural soils affect carbon and nitrogen cycles and alter greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers found that microplastics reduce soil water retention, decrease soil respiration, and increase emissions of carbon monoxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. The study reveals that microplastic contamination in farmland may have broader climate implications by disrupting the soil processes that regulate greenhouse gas fluxes.
Microplastic pollution as an environmental risk exacerbating the greenhouse effect and climate change: a review
Researchers reviewed how microplastics contribute to climate change by releasing greenhouse gases as they degrade, disrupting plant photosynthesis, and altering soil microbial communities that regulate carbon and methane emissions. The review reveals a troubling feedback loop: microplastics worsen global warming, and rising temperatures cause more microplastics to be resuspended from sediments, further intensifying environmental contamination.
Microplastics transport and impact on nitrogen cycling and N2O emissions in estuaries
This review synthesized evidence on how microplastics disrupt nitrogen cycling and amplify nitrous oxide emissions in estuarine ecosystems, proposing an integrative conceptual model. Microplastics affect nitrogen transformation through adsorption of nitrogenous compounds, microbial community restructuring, enzymatic inhibition, and promotion of incomplete denitrification within plastisphere biofilms.
Estuarine plastisphere as an overlooked source of N2O production
Researchers found that the "plastisphere" — the community of microbes that colonizes floating plastic debris in estuaries — produces more nitrous oxide (a potent greenhouse gas) than surrounding water, revealing that plastic pollution may be quietly contributing to climate change through altered microbial chemistry.
Microplastics stimulated nitrous oxide emissions primarily through denitrification: A meta-analysis
Meta-analysis of 60 studies found that microplastic exposure increased soil nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions by 140.6%, primarily by stimulating denitrification rates (up 17.8%) and denitrifier gene abundance (up 10.6%), while nitrification remained unaffected. This resulted in a 38.8% increase in soil nitrite and a 22.4% decrease in nitrate.
Bridging the gap: a review on the interaction between (micro)plastics and climate change
This review examined the two-way relationship between climate change and microplastic pollution. Researchers found that climate-driven changes like rising temperatures, altered weather patterns, and ocean acidification can accelerate microplastic breakdown and redistribute particles across ecosystems, while plastic production and degradation processes themselves contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, creating a reinforcing cycle.
A Synthesis of Global Coastal Ocean Greenhouse Gas Fluxes
This large-scale study measured greenhouse gas exchanges between the coastal ocean and atmosphere, finding that while coastal waters absorb carbon dioxide, they also release nitrous oxide and methane that offset much of that climate benefit. While focused on greenhouse gases rather than microplastics, the study is relevant because climate change and ocean chemistry changes affect how microplastics behave in marine environments. Warming oceans and changing chemistry could influence how microplastics break down and move through the food chain.
Exploring the potential impacts of microplastics on greenhouse gas emissions in wastewater treatment
This review analyzed how microplastics in wastewater treatment plants affect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, focusing on mechanisms by which microplastics alter microbial communities and their metabolic processes. The plastisphere was identified as a key site for altered methane and nitrous oxide production, with implications for climate reporting from the water sector.
Microplastics and their mechanisms in influencing methane oxidation: A physiological and ecological perspective
This review examines the physiological and ecological mechanisms by which microplastics influence methane oxidation processes in the environment, synthesising current understanding of how ubiquitous plastic contamination may disrupt microbial communities responsible for mitigating methane — a greenhouse gas 20-30 times more potent than CO2.
Effect of microplastics on soil greenhouse gas emissions: A global meta-analysis study
This global meta-analysis found that microplastic exposure in soil decreased nitrous oxide emissions by 28.5% and increased methane emissions by 28.6%, though neither change was statistically significant overall. Effects varied dramatically depending on microplastic shape, concentration, soil type, and pH, with fiber-shaped microplastics reducing CO2 emissions by 40% while microplastics in sandy soils increased CO2 by 21%.
Recent advances on the effects of microplastics on elements cycling in the environment
This review summarized how microplastics affect carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycling in the environment, finding that impacts occur primarily in soil ecosystems where microplastics alter CO2 emissions, nitrogen transformation processes, and phosphorus availability.
Emerging Challenges from Plastics-Driven Climate Change
This review examines how the plastic life cycle — from fossil fuel extraction through manufacturing to disposal — generates substantial greenhouse gas emissions, while environmental microplastics disrupt ecosystems and reduce ocean carbon sequestration, creating a bidirectional link between plastic pollution and climate change.
The impacts of microplastics on the cycling of carbon and nitrogen in terrestrial soil ecosystems: Progress and prospects
This review examines how microplastics in soil affect the cycling of carbon and nitrogen, two elements essential for plant growth and soil health. Microplastics alter soil microbial communities and enzyme activity in ways that change greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient availability, which could ultimately affect crop production and the food supply.
Microplastics and Climate Change: Analyzing the Environmental Impact and Mitigation Strategies
This review analyzes the relationship between microplastic pollution and climate change, examining how each phenomenon worsens the other and what mitigation strategies might address both simultaneously. The authors find that warming accelerates plastic fragmentation while microplastics contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, calling for integrated environmental policy responses.
Insights into N2O turnovers under polyethylene terephthalate microplastics stress in mainstream biological nitrogen removal process
Long-term exposure of biological nitrogen removal (BNR) wastewater systems to polyethylene terephthalate microplastics at concentrations up to 500 micrograms per liter altered nitrous oxide (N2O) production and reduction during denitrification over 100-plus days of treatment. The findings suggest MPs in municipal wastewater could inadvertently increase greenhouse gas emissions from wastewater treatment plants.
Microplastic diversity stimulates N2O emission during NO3−-N transformation by altering microbial interaction and electron consumption in eutrophic water
Researchers examined how mixtures of different microplastic types in eutrophic water bodies affect nitrous oxide emissions during nitrogen transformation. They found that greater microplastic diversity significantly increased N2O emissions by altering microbial community interactions and electron transfer processes. The study suggests that the combined presence of multiple microplastic types may amplify their environmental impact on greenhouse gas emissions from water systems.
Long-term aged fibrous polypropylene microplastics promotes nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide, and methane emissions from a coastal wetland soil
Researchers found that aged polypropylene microplastic fibers significantly increased greenhouse gas emissions from coastal wetland soil, including nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide, and methane. The older and more weathered the microplastics were, the greater their impact on gas emissions, likely because aging changes the soil's physical and chemical properties. This matters because it shows microplastic pollution could be worsening climate change, which in turn affects food production and human health.
Climate change and microplastics: a two-way interaction
This review characterises the bidirectional relationship between microplastics and climate change: plastics production and degradation generate greenhouse gases, while rising temperatures and changing precipitation alter MP distribution and toxicity in ecosystems. It calls for integrated strategies that address both plastic pollution and climate change.