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

该项目将使用一套尖端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，目前我们的星球上有83亿吨塑料（Geyer等人，2017年），其中大部分（每年大约5-近1300万吨）最终进入了海洋（Jambeck等人，2015年）。塑料是一个主要的环境问题和研究问题，在过去十年中出现了：问题的规模是巨大的，而且越来越大。迄今为止，人们关注的焦点一直是这种材料的生物相互作用，但我们的知识还存在重大空白，特别是在塑料作为地质循环组成部分的行为方面。我们不知道塑料作为“沉积”颗粒在陆地、河流、湖泊和海洋中的宏观和微观行为，不知道它们是如何沉积的，也不知道它们在沉积和掩埋后的短期和长期命运。本研究将通过实验室实验与实地收集塑料数据相结合的方法来找到答案。实验室实验将是该项目的一个重要重点，并将设计成一套过程模型，这些过程有可能影响塑料从陆地到海底乃至更远的旅程中如何运输、化学和物理改变。我们将只关注发现塑料的几个环境隔间。

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.