Understanding Plastic Pollution in Freshwater Environments

Dear Colleagues,

Plastic pollution is a major concern in the international scientific and political agendas. Its global distribution across terrestrial and marine ecosystems can lead to yet unknown ecological impacts, affecting biota, and eventually humans. To date, knowledge remains limited with regard to the quantities, distribution, and possible effects of plastics in natural ecosystems, which, along with an expected increase in plastic production in the coming years, calls for urgent action to understand and reduce their occurrence in the environment. So far, the majority of attention has been focused on the marine environment. However, new research demonstrates the important role that freshwater systems play in receiving inland generated waste, acting as sinks and/or pathways to the seas, and highlights the existence of major gaps in knowledge and data to tackle the plastic issue.

We welcome manuscripts dealing with all aspects related to the interdisciplinary topic of plastic pollution in freshwater environments (rivers, streams, lakes, ice) and transitional waters, such as estuaries. Original field work and modeling and review contributions are relevant. We expect studies aimed at understanding the sources, quantities, distribution, and effects of plastics in freshwater systems. Facilitating identification of pollution priorities and development of sound mitigation measures, in relation to different stakeholders (researchers, society, industry, and policy-makers), will be considered an asset.

Among others, we emphasize the need to bridge the gaps in relation to the following aspects:

• Monitoring and analytical methodologies for quantification and assessment of plastic pollution;
• Harmonization of monitoring and assessment approaches for coherence and comparability of results;
• Plastic leakage from sources to the environment, rates and quantities, e.g., from WWTPs, waste management systems, littering;
• Transport from source to sink within freshwater systems, and towards the marine environment (e.g., through rivers, estuaries, and runoff, as pathways);
• Distribution across environmental matrices (e.g., water, sediment, and biota) and ecosystem compartments (e.g., water surface layer, water column, ice, riverbed, riverbanks);
• Distribution, in number and weight, of particles and items across the whole size spectrum (macro-, meso-, micro-, and nanoplastics);
• Effects and impact on organisms, plastic–biota interactions, biota–humans interactions (e.g., fish consumption);
• Degradation and fragmentation processes, e.g., from macro to micro;
• Effects of colonization and biofilm formation on plastics;
• Chemicals and metals associated to plastics;
• Citizen science approaches for data collection;
• Reducing uncertainties in plastic emission to the marine environment.

Dr. Daniel González-Fernández
Dr. Martín C.M. Blettler
Dr. Friederike Stock
Dr. Christian Scherer
Guest Editors

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