Lead: Francesca Garaventa

Istituto per lo Studio degli Impatti Antropici e Sostenibilità in Ambiente Marino, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR-IAS)

Image credit: CNR-IAS

Work Package 1 comprises field sampling activities that cover a wide geographical area including the Adriatic Sea, Western Mediterranean Sea, North East Atlantic Ocean, North Sea, and Baltic Sea. This work package aims; to model the transport of microplastics in European coastal regions and probable plastic accumulation areas; to optimize sampling procedures for biologically relevant microplastics and nanoplastics in water, sediments, and biota; to map the stratification of microplastics through the water column to sediments; to characterize the seasonal variability of microplastics in indicator species from various geographical areas; to identify the relationships between hydrography, seasonal anthropogenic inputs, distribution of microplastics along the water column, sediments, and biota; to test the feasibility of nanoplastics analyses in environmental matrices at selected sites; to chemically characterize and micronize stranded microplastics for other relevant work packages; and to develop an integrated value to express microplastics in terms of number of particles and the biological relevance of their size, shape, and polymer type.