The DOI matches its Crossref record; 31 of the 31 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The geological cycle of plastics and their use as a stratigraphic indicator of the Anthropocene
Open accessAbstract
The rise of plastics since the mid-20th century, both as a material element of modern life and as a growing environmental pollutant, has been widely described. Their distribution in both the terrestrial and marine realms suggests that they are a key geological indicator of the Anthropocene, as a distinctive stratal component. Most immediately evident in terrestrial deposits, they are clearly becoming widespread in marine sedimentary deposits in both shallow- and deep-water settings. They are abundant and widespread as macroscopic fragments and virtually ubiquitous as microplastic particles; these are dispersed by both physical and biological processes, not least via the food chain and the ‘faecal express’ route from surface to sea floor. Plastics are already widely dispersed in sedimentary deposits, and their amount seems likely to grow several-fold over the next few decades. They will continue to be input into the sedimentary cycle over coming millennia as temporary stores – landfill sites – are eroded. Plastics already enable fine time resolution within Anthropocene deposits via the development of their different types and via the artefacts (‘technofossils’) they are moulded into, and many of these may have long-term preservation potential when buried in strata.
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Citations
Cites
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BackgroundPlastic debris in the open ocean
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The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene
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The deep sea is a major sink for microplastic debris
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BackgroundMethodInfluential
Cited by
Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made
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The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene
Waters, C. N., Zalasiewicz, J., Summerhayes, C., Barnosky, A. D., Poirier, C., Gałuszka, A., Cearreta, A., Edgeworth, M., Ellis, E. C., Ellis, M., et al. (2016) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aad2622 · Cited by 2,375
Self-citationMicroplastic contamination of river beds significantly reduced by catchment-wide flooding
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Fei, Y., Huang, S., Zhang, H., Tong, Y., Wen, D., Xia, X., Wang, H., Luo, Y., & Barceló, D. (2020) · Science of The Total Environment · doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.135634 · Cited by 854
Metadata
- Authors
- Zalasiewicz, J., Waters, C. N., Ivar do Sul, J. A., Corcoran, P. L., Barnosky, A. D., Cearreta, A., Edgeworth, M., Gałuszka, A., Jeandel, C., Leinfelder, R., McNeill, J. R., Steffen, W., Summerhayes, C., Wagreich, M., Williams, M., Wolfe, A. P., & Yonan, Y.
- Venue
- Anthropocene
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2016-03
- Volume
- 13
- Pages
- 4-17
- ISSN
- 2213-3054 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2251856535
- Cited by
- 929
- References
- 31
- FWCI
- 32.26
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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- Zalasiewicz, J., Waters, C. N., Ivar do Sul, J. A., Corcoran, P. L., Barnosky, A. D., Cearreta, A., Edgeworth, M., Gałuszka, A., Jeandel, C., Leinfelder, R., McNeill, J. R., Steffen, W., Summerhayes, C., Wagreich, M., Williams, M., Wolfe, A. P., & Yonan, Y. (2016). The geological cycle of plastics and their use as a stratigraphic indicator of the Anthropocene. Anthropocene. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2016.01.002
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
