Publication Details

Category Text Publication
Reference Category Journals
DOI 10.1127/fal/2020/1350
Licence creative commons licence
Title (Primary) Plastics in freshwater ecosystems. Editorial to the thematic corner
Author Wendt-Potthoff, K. ORCID logo ; Gabel, F.
Source Titel Fundamental and Applied Limnology
Year 2020
Department SEEFO
Volume 194
Issue 1
Page From 33
Page To 35
Language englisch
Keywords Plastics; Freshwater; River; Stream; Lake
Abstract After a long phase of marine-dominated microplastic research and public awareness, freshwater habitats have become a focus with respect to plastic pollution and associated ecological effects (Wagner et al. 2014). While the final analytical procedures to identify plastic polymers are similar for marine and freshwater samples, the distribution of plastic in freshwaters and consequently the sampling pose some additional challenges. Freshwaters comprise highly diverse waterbodies regarding their size, depth, and biogeochemical quality. They include complex hydrological systems with manmade infrastructures like dams and wastewater treatment plants and with strong seasonal variations probably leading to significant differences in plastic concentrations on small scales. Due to their proximity to human settlements, there is a variety of plastic sources and possibly also sinks along the way to the oceans. All this needs to be considered when designing sampling campaigns in order to produce representative and interoperable data. resentative and interoperable data. Freshwater biota can be affected by plastic pollution from the basis of food webs to top predators. This has long been neglected at least in public, as there are fewer single iconic species known from freshwaters, and fewer freshwater invertebrates are used for human consumption compared to marine species. However, recent laboratory studies show that freshwater organisms may be affected by plastic (e.g. Oliveira et al. 2018; Vosshage et al. 2018), and there is increasing evidence that freshwater organisms are exposed to microplastics in situ (Su et al. 2018; Windsor et al. 2019). In this regard, it is important to distinguish if microplastics are taken up, if this causes toxic effects, and if so, whether these are related to the plastic particles themselves or to associated chemicals. Moreover, to improve our understanding of microplastic-associated ecological effects, it is extremely important to publish also studies where no or weak effects have been observed. These trends motivated us to propose a thematic section about plastics in freshwaters in Fundamental and Applied Limnology, and to ask for contributions at limnological conferences (https://www.dgl-ev.de/publikationen/dgl-tagungsbaende/tagungsberichte.html) and in plastic-related networks (https://bmbf-plastik. de/en/plastiknet). In the end, we received four scientific contributions which span the range from designing sampling concepts, assessing microplastic concentrations in freshwaters, testing toxicity in freshwater invertebrates, to international awareness and actions towards the problem of plastic in freshwaters.
Persistent UFZ Identifier https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=23591
Wendt-Potthoff, K., Gabel, F. (2020):
Plastics in freshwater ecosystems. Editorial to the thematic corner
Fundam. Appl. Limnol. 194 (1), 33 - 35 10.1127/fal/2020/1350