Deltares, Department of Marine and Coastal Systems, P.O. Box 177, 2600, MH Delft, The Netherlands.
Deltares, Department of Marine and Coastal Systems, P.O. Box 177, 2600, MH Delft, The Netherlands; Ifremer, Centre de Bretagne, Département DYNECO, CS 10070, 29280 Plouzané, France.
Mar Pollut Bull. 2018 Oct;135:17-29. doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2018.05.067. Epub 2018 Jul 4.
Marine and coastal ecosystems are among the largest contributors to the Earth's productivity. Experimental studies have shown negative impacts of microplastics on individual algae or zooplankton organisms. Consequently, primary and secondary productivity may be negatively affected as well. In this study we attempted to estimate the impacts on productivity at ecosystem level based on reported laboratory findings with a modelling approach, using our biogeochemical model for the North Sea (Delft3D-GEM). Although the model predicted that microplastics do not affect the total primary or secondary production of the North Sea as a whole, the spatial patterns of secondary production were altered, showing local changes of ±10%. However, relevant field data on microplastics are scarce, and strong assumptions were required to include the plastic concentrations and their impacts under field conditions into the model. These assumptions reveal the main knowledge gaps that have to be resolved to improve the first estimate above.
海洋和沿海生态系统是地球生产力的最大贡献者之一。实验研究表明，微塑料对藻类或浮游动物个体有负面影响。因此，初级和次级生产力也可能受到负面影响。在这项研究中，我们试图根据实验室报告的结果，通过建模方法来估算生态系统水平上的影响，使用我们的北海生物地球化学模型（Delft3D-GEM）。尽管该模型预测微塑料不会影响整个北海的总初级或次级生产力，但改变了次级生产力的空间模式，显示出±10%的局部变化。然而，关于微塑料的相关现场数据很少，需要进行强烈的假设才能将塑料浓度及其在现场条件下的影响纳入模型。这些假设揭示了必须解决的主要知识空白，以改进上述初步估计。
