Plastic a new anthropogenic component of the geological cycle: its chemical and physical behaviour and transformation

塑料是地质循环中新的人为组成部分：其化学和物理行为及转化

• 批准号: 2277945
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Leicester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2277945
• 关键词: Plastic; new; anthropogenic; component; geological

This project will use a suite of cutting edge analytical techniques and experimental design to address an important and significant problem: the behaviour of plastics within the geological cycle. A number of recent studies have elucidated the extent of the plastics problem on Earth with now 8.3 billion tons on our planet (Geyer et al. 2017), much of which (between approximately 5-nearly 13 million tons per year) ends up in the ocean (Jambeck et al 2015). Plastic is a major environmental problem and research issue which has emerged over the last decade: the scale of the problem is huge and getting bigger. To date, focus has been on the biological interactions of this material, but there are significant gaps in our knowledge especially in the area of how plastic behaves as a component of the geological cycle. We do not know how plastics behave as 'sedimentary' particles, both macro and micro on land and in rivers, lakes and the sea, how they get deposited and their short and long term fate once deposited and buried. This research will find out through combing laboratory experiments with fieldwork collecting data on plastics. Laboratory experiments will be a significant focus of the project, and will be designed to model a suite of processes that have the potential to affect how plastic is transported and chemically and physically modified from its journey from land, through to seafloor and beyond. We will focus on just a few of the environmental compartments in which plastic is found.

该项目将使用一套先进的分析技术和实验设计来解决一个重要而重要的问题：塑料在地质循环中的行为。最近的一些研究已经阐明了地球上塑料问题的严重程度，现在我们这个星球上有83亿吨塑料（盖耶等人，2017），其中大部分（每年约500万至近1300万吨）最终进入海洋（Jambeck等人，2015）。塑料是一个主要的环境问题和研究问题，在过去十年中出现：这个问题的规模是巨大的，而且越来越大。到目前为止，人们一直关注这种材料的生物相互作用，但我们的知识存在重大差距，特别是在塑料如何作为地质循环的一个组成部分方面。我们不知道塑料作为“沉积”颗粒的行为，无论是在陆地上还是在河流，湖泊和海洋中的宏观和微观，它们是如何沉积的，以及它们一旦沉积和埋藏的短期和长期命运。本研究将通过实验室实验和实地收集塑料数据相结合的方法来发现。实验室实验将是该项目的一个重要重点，并将被设计为模拟一系列过程，这些过程有可能影响塑料从陆地到海底及其他地方的运输和化学和物理改性方式。我们将重点关注塑料被发现的几个环境分区。