Opening Space for Plastics—Why Spatial, Soil and Land Use Data Are Important to Understand Global Soil (Micro)Plastic Pollution

Abstract

After five years of research on microplastic pollution of soils it becomes obvious that soil systems act as a reservoir for microplastics on global scales. Nevertheless, the exact role of soils within global microplastic cycles, plastic fluxes within soils and environmental consequences are so far only partly understood. Against the background of a global environmental plastic pollution, the spatial reference, spatial levels, sampling approaches and documentation practices of soil context data becomes important. Within this review, we therefore evaluate the availability of spatial MP soil data on a global scale through the application of a questionnaire applied to 35 case studies on microplastics in soils published since 2016. We found that the global database on microplastics in soils is mainly limited to agricultural used topsoils in Central Europe and China. Data on major global areas and soil regions are missing, leading to a limited understanding of soils plastic pollution. Furthermore, we found that open data handling, geospatial data and documentation of basic soil information are underrepresented, which hinders further understanding of global plastic fluxes in soils. Out of this context, we give recommendations for spatial reference and soil context data collection, access and combination with soil microplastic data, to work towards a global and free soil microplastic data hub.

Keywords

• plastic crisis
• soil geography
• sampling
• geodata
• spatial
• open data