The recent acceleration of microplastic pollution has increased the need to develop novel collaborative tools for synergistic problems affecting coastal and oceanic ecosystems. One of the main hurdles is the lack of standardized, comparable and integrated information on smaller size (micro- and nano-) plastic pollution, including their abundance, sources, regional hotspots of accumulation, fragmentation, and transport at the land-sea interface.

The i-plastic project aims to comprehensively ascertain the fate of microplastics (5 mm to 1 µm) and nanoplastics (below 1 µm) at the land-ocean interface under distinct flow and climate regimes, and their dispersion to the open ocean.

This overall objective will be addressed through a seasonal in-situ monitoring of three estuaries located in Brazil, Portugal and Spain, laboratory experiments on distinct commercially valuable species, the development of new approaches to detect and characterize nanoplastics in environmental matrices and the processes governing macroplastics (over 5 mm) fragmentation. The data generated will be used to model the dispersion of these pollutants from the land-sea interface to the open ocean.