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61,005 resultsShowing papers similar to Sources, sinks and transformations of plastics in our oceans: Review, management strategies and modelling
ClearFate of plastics and microplastics in the marine environment
This thesis reviewed how plastics and microplastics enter, move through, and accumulate in marine environments, examining sources, transport pathways, and long-term fate. Understanding the ocean's plastic burden is essential for predicting ecological and human health risks.
Distribution and importance of microplastics in the marine environment: A review of the sources, fate, effects, and potential solutions
This review synthesized research on the distribution and significance of microplastics across the marine environment, covering sources, transport pathways, ecological interactions, and the state of knowledge on biological and chemical effects.
Plastic Pollution in Oceans: a Review
This review examines plastic pollution in the world's oceans, covering sources, distribution pathways, ecological impacts, and the current state of scientific understanding of marine plastic contamination.
The Sources and Fate of Plastic Entering the Marine Environment
This report reviews the sources, pathways, and environmental fate of plastic entering the marine environment, covering everything from land-based inputs via rivers to direct ocean dumping. It provides a comprehensive overview of how plastics reach the ocean and what happens to them once there.
Driver, Trends and Fate of Plastics and Micro Plastics Occurrence in the Environment
This review examines the sources, trends, and environmental fate of plastics and microplastics, which have become a major global pollution problem due to massive production and poor waste management. Understanding how plastics move through the environment is essential for designing effective pollution controls.
Review on the distribution of microplastics in the oceans and its impacts: Need for modeling-based approach to investigate the transport and risk of microplastic pollution
This review synthesizes evidence on microplastic distribution across global oceans and argues that modeling-based approaches are urgently needed to better understand transport pathways and assess pollution risks at scale.
Plastic Debris and the Marine Environment: Integrating Transformational Strategies in Achieving a Sustainable Environment
This review examines the sources, environmental pathways, and ecological impacts of marine plastic debris, and discusses transformational strategies including policy intervention, improved waste management, and alternative materials to achieve sustainable ocean management.
Plastics in the Indian Ocean – sources, fate, distribution and impacts
This review synthesizes data on plastic sources, distribution, sinks, and ecological impacts specifically in the Indian Ocean, finding the region understudied relative to the Atlantic and Pacific despite significant local plastic pollution pressures.
Plastic waste in the marine environment: A review of sources, occurrence and effects
This review covered the sources, occurrence, and ecological effects of plastic waste in the marine environment, synthesizing evidence on how plastic pollution enters the ocean, where it accumulates, and what harm it causes to marine life.
Plastic litter in the oceans. Most of it has gone missing, but it might just be transformed… or transported
This review examines the ongoing debate over the apparent 'missing plastic' paradox in the world's oceans, where estimated plastic leakage greatly exceeds measured surface abundance. The authors discuss recent findings suggesting that plastic may be transformed through fragmentation and degradation or transported to deep ocean and coastal sediments rather than accumulating at the surface.
On some physical and dynamical properties of microplastic particles in marine environment
This study examined the physical and dynamical properties of microplastic particles in marine environments, using modeling to predict how particle shape, density, and size govern transport, dispersion, and accumulation patterns.
Characteristics of Plastic Pollution in the Environment: A Review.
This review covers the key characteristics of plastic pollution — including sources, abundance, transport, and degradation — across different environmental compartments. It synthesizes knowledge about what makes plastic pollution persistent and widespread, providing a foundation for understanding microplastic formation and behavior in the environment.
A mass budget and box model of global plastics cycling, degradation and dispersal in the land-ocean-atmosphere system
This study developed a mass budget and box model to trace the global cycling, degradation, and dispersal of plastics across environmental compartments over time, estimating how plastic accumulates in ocean surface waters, deep sea, beaches, and soils. The model predicted that most plastic entering the ocean ultimately settles in sediments rather than persisting at the surface.
The fate of missing ocean plastics: Are they just a marine environmental problem?
Researchers estimated a global ocean plastic mass budget to address the paradox of missing ocean plastics, finding that processes like fragmentation, sedimentation, and beaching account for much of the imbalance between plastic inputs and observed floating debris.
A global mass budget for positively buoyant macroplastic debris in the ocean
A mass budget analysis challenged the conventional explanation that the majority of ocean macroplastic mass is converted to microplastics and sinks, instead arguing that coastal circulation dynamics may account for the discrepancy between plastic emission estimates and surface accumulation. The study suggests that decades-old objects still found at sea indicate longer surface residence times than current models assume.
Microplastics as contaminants in the marine environment: A review
This review synthesized the state of knowledge on microplastics as marine contaminants, covering their sources, pathways, distribution, biological uptake, and potential ecological and toxicological effects.
The fate of plastic litter within estuarine compartments: An overview of current knowledge for the transboundary issue to guide future assessments
Researchers reviewed global knowledge on plastic fate within estuaries and found plastic concentrations reaching thousands of items per cubic meter in water and sediment, while identifying major methodological gaps — particularly that microfibers are consistently undersampled and that studies rarely account for ecological trophic gradients or the physicochemical dynamics driving plastic distribution and bioavailability.
The Contribution of Microplastics to Marine Pollution
This review examines the contribution of microplastics to marine pollution, covering the pathways by which plastic particles enter ocean systems, their distribution across ocean basins, effects on marine life, and the challenges of reducing the flow of plastic into the sea.
All is not lost: deriving a top-down mass budget of plastic at sea
Using a top-down mass budget approach, this study estimated how much plastic is present in the ocean by accounting for known inputs and fragmentation processes. The analysis helps identify where plastic mass is "missing" — whether through burial, beaching, or degradation — a key question for understanding the long-term fate of ocean plastic pollution.
Transport of marine microplastic particles: why is it so difficult to predict?
This review examines why predicting the transport of marine microplastic particles is challenging, highlighting that the wide distributions of particle density, size, and shape create continuously varying dynamical properties such as sinking velocity and resuspension thresholds. Researchers found that existing numerical models predominantly use simplified single-particle representations and fail to capture how particle properties change over time in the marine environment.
A mass budget and box model of global plastics cycling, fragmentation and dispersal in the land-ocean-atmosphere system
Researchers constructed a global mass budget and box model tracking plastic polymer flows from production through fragmentation into microplastics across land, ocean, and atmosphere. The model suggests ocean microplastic stocks are much larger than surface measurements indicate, and that atmospheric transport plays a significant role in redistribution of marine-derived microplastics.
Impacts of changing ocean circulation on the distribution of marine microplastic litter
Researchers modelled the impact of changing ocean circulation on the distribution of marine microplastics, examining how projected shifts in current patterns may alter the accumulation zones and transport pathways of plastic particles measuring less than 5 mm.
A mass budget and box model of global plastics cycling, degradation and dispersal in the land-ocean-atmosphere system.
Researchers developed a global mass budget and box model tracking plastic cycling across terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric reservoirs from 1950 to 2015, incorporating historical production data, fragmentation, and transport dynamics for macroplastics, large microplastics, and small microplastics. The model estimated that the deep ocean (82 Tg) and shelf sediments (116 Tg) represent major plastic reservoirs, and that even maximum feasible reduction scenarios would result in approximately 4-fold increases in atmospheric and aquatic microplastic exposure by 2050 due to legacy plastics already in circulation.
Environmental emission, fate and transformation of microplastics in biotic and abiotic compartments: Global status, recent advances and future perspectives
This global review synthesizes knowledge on the emission, environmental fate, and transformation of microplastics across biotic and abiotic compartments, identifying key research gaps and future priorities for understanding the full plastic pollution lifecycle.