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Diverging estimates of river plastic input to the ocean

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Estimates of plastic input from rivers to ocean vary by up to five orders of magnitude. Harmonization of field data used to calibrate models and a better understanding of transport processes are key to reducing these uncertainties, contributing to meaningful assessments of the effectiveness of environmental regulations against plastic pollution.

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Fig. 1: Estimates of marine plastic input from rivers to the ocean.

Change history

  • 30 June 2023

    In the version of this article initially published, the top two references in the Figure 1 legend (Schmidt2 and Lebreton1) were interchanged and are now corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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Acknowledgements

This publication is part of the GLO project (PDC2021-121690-I00), funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/50110001103 and by the European Union ‘NextGenerationEU”/PRTR’. D. González-Fernández was supported by the European Union (H2020-MSCA–IF–2018 846843 - LitRivus) and by the 2014-2020 ERDF Operational Programme and the Department of Economy, Knowledge, Business and University of the Regional Government of Andalusia: Project reference FEDER-UCA18-107247. C. Laufkötter acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation under grants 174124 and 203448. The work of T. H. M. van Emmerik is supported by the Veni research program The River Plastic Monitoring Project with Project Number 18211, which is (partly) financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University Marine Research Institute INMAR, University of Cádiz and European University of the Seas SEA-EU, Puerto Real, Spain

    Daniel González-Fernández & Andrés Cózar

  2. Directorate D-Sustainable Resources-Bio-Economy Unit, European Commission Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy

    Caspar T. J. Roebroek

  3. Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Caspar T. J. Roebroek

  4. Climate and Environmental Physics, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Charlotte Laufkötter

  5. Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Charlotte Laufkötter

  6. Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands

    Tim H. M. van Emmerik

Authors
  1. Daniel González-Fernández
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  2. Caspar T. J. Roebroek
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  3. Charlotte Laufkötter
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  4. Andrés Cózar
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  5. Tim H. M. van Emmerik
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Correspondence to Daniel González-Fernández.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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González-Fernández, D., Roebroek, C.T.J., Laufkötter, C. et al. Diverging estimates of river plastic input to the ocean. Nat Rev Earth Environ 4, 424–426 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-023-00448-3

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