Abstract
Riparian areas are highly dynamic bio-geophysical settings with a surge of waste deposition predominantly including land-based plastic discards. These polymer discards are destined to be the prime constitution of marine “plastisphere.” The polymer fate is determined by waterbodies, where the chances of plastic retention are higher, eventually mediating the formation of microplastics (MPs) in years or decades. Such formed MPs are a potential threat to the aqua bio-regime. A systematic investigation of three waterbody basin soils (Karamana River, Killiyar, and Akkulam-Veli Lake) showed the presence of MPs in all the samples analyzed with varying sizes, shapes, colors, and compositions. MPs of the shapes flakes, fragments, filaments, sheets, foams, and fibers were observed with dimensions 0.3–4.7 mm. Most of the particles were white in hue (WT), followed by colorless (CL), light yellow (L.Y), light brown (L.B), orange (OR), red (RD), and blue (BL), respectively. The polymer communities were identified as high-density polyethylene (HDPE), low-density polyethylene (LDPE), polypropylene (PP), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polystyrene (PS), and nylon. The highest average MP density was identified in the basin of Killiyar (799 ± 0.09 pieces/kg) followed by Karamana River (671 ± 3.45 pieces/kg), indicating the closeness of the sampling station to the city center compared to Akkulam-Veli Lake (486 ± 58.55 pieces/kg). The majority of the sampling sites belonged to the slopy areas and came under the highly urbanized land category. A close association was observed between particle abundance and urban activity. The study foresees possible threats inflicted by MP abundance upon the area-wide hydro-biological system.
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Data availability
Some of the datasets used in the current study were retrieved from the open sources mentioned in the methodology, while the administrative boundary file was attained from the Inter-University Center for Geo-information Science and Technology (IUCGIST), University of Kerala. Data such as tables, charts, and maps are not publicly available due to data security reasons but shall be provided by the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Library of All Saints’ College, Thiruvananthapuram and the Kerala University Library, Palayam for providing the necessary information which aroused the motivation to initiate and conduct this study and to prepare this manuscript. The authors also thank the Environmental Chemistry Laboratory of All Saints’ College and the Laboratory of the Department of Physics, Karyavattom Campus, University of Kerala for providing the required facilities for the work. The authors also thank all the pioneers whose research works have been refereed while preparing this manuscript.
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The work was done using the grants provided by the Department of Minority Welfare Kerala as the ASPIRE Scholarship Research Award and the Research Grants provided by the University of Kerala, which provided financial assistance for the smooth conduct of the study.
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ABSK and MM: exhibited equal contribution in the execution; methodology and sampling scheme setting; data collection; data analysis and validation; investigation; resources utilization; graphs, tables, and spatial distribution map generation; handling GIS and statistical software and writing of draft manuscript. AJ: conceptualization, planning of methodology and workflow design, supervision, data validation and visualization, error correction, editing and proofreading.
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Krishna, A.B.S., Madhu, M. & Jayadev, A. Investigation of microplastics and microplastic communities in selected river and lake basin soils of Thiruvananthapuram District, Kerala, India. Environ Monit Assess 196, 66 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-12219-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-12219-0