Plastic debris is thought to be widespread in freshwater ecosystems globally(1). However, a lack of comprehensive and comparable data makes rigorous assessment of its distribution challenging(2,3). Here we present a standardized cross-national survey that assesses the abundance and type of plastic debris (>250 mu m) in freshwater ecosystems. We sample surface waters of 38 lakes and reservoirs, distributed acros...
Space-for-Time-Substitution surveys (SFTS) are commonly used to describe zooplankton community dynamics and to determine lake ecosystem health. SFTS surveys typically combine single point observations from many lakes to evaluate the response of zooplankton community structure and dynamics (e.g., species abundance and biomass, diversity, demographics and modeled rate processes) to spatial gradients in hypothesiz...
Plastic debris is widespread in freshwater ecosystems, but a rigorous assessment of its global distribution has been hindered by a lack of comprehensive and comparable data. We performed the first standardized global survey of lakes to assess the quantity and type of plastics (>250μm). We included 38 lakes located in 23 different countries distributed across five continents, spanning different environmental gra...
The majority of microplastic research has focused on seawater, with fewer than 4% of microplasticsrelated studies occurring on freshwaters. The limited available information suggests that the abundance of microplastics in freshwaters is often as high or even higher than marine environments. However, comprehensive investigations on occurrence and fate of microplastics in freshwaters are scarce and highly fragmen...
Many zooplankton species typically exhibit diel vertical migration (DVM), where zooplankton migrate from the hypolimnion to the epilimnion of lakes at night. Zooplankton exhibit this behavior to avoid visual predators and UV radiation by remaining in the bottom waters during the day and ascending to the surface waters to feed on phytoplankton at night. However, hypoxic conditions in the hypolimnion of lakes may...