Microplastics in Soils: Occurrence, Sources, Contaminant Vectors, and Effects on Soil Properties

Dear Colleagues,

In this century, climate change is the most vital and most sensitive environmental problem that humanity is facing, with serious potential consequences in the coming decades. Other important challenges include the urgent need to reduce the volume of pollutants that are discharged into various environmental compartments, as well as to mitigate the effects of their release on the functioning of natural ecosystems.

In this context, plastic pollution is a major environmental concern that has recently increased attention from governments and the scientific community. The ubiquitous presence of plastic in all areas of the environment (water, soil, air, and biota) is producing deleterious effects that have not yet been fully studied or understood.

Microplastics (MPs) have been widely detected in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, creating a great need for studies assessing their impact on these ecosystems. Anthropogenic activities, such as the use of plastics for agricultural mulching, irrigation with wastewaters, application of soil amendments (e.g., sewage sludge and compost), and even atmospheric deposition, make the soil one of the largest storage reservoirs for MPs. Furthermore, pollutants (e.g., organic contaminants, toxic metals, and pathogens) that adhere to and are transported together with MPs can pose a major additional environmental risk.

The existence of MPs for a long time in soils, due to their low biodegradability, can change the physicochemical properties and affect soil microbial communities and enzymatic activities, posing a potential environmental risk to terrestrial ecosystems. Recent research has also identified a high risk of MPs transferring from terrestrial ecosystems into the human food chain, anticipating MPs pollution as a future threat to food security and sustainable agriculture.

The goals of this Special Issue are to gather emergent research dedicated to advances in assessing the occurrence, sources, and potential ecological risks of MPs in terrestrial soil ecosystems.

Dr. Ana Paula Honrado Pinto
Dr. Jorge M. S. Faria
Guest Editors

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