Marine plastics - from Local to Global
- Calendar
- Lectures
- Date
- Wednesday, 9 Mar 2022 7:30 pm
- Speaker
- Professor Andy Cundy
- Director of Internationalisation, University of Southampton
Location
Royal Agricultural University - Sir Emrys Jones Lecture Theatre
Sir Emrys Jones Lecture Theatre, RAU, Cirencester GL7 6JS
Description
Presentation synopsis:
Marine plastics, and their potential environmental impacts, have seen an explosion in research and public interest over the last 5 years. Plastic debris is now found globally, from the poles to the deepest ocean trenches, and we are only just starting to understand the processes by which plastics move through and break down in the environment and their implications for planetary health.
This presentation will discuss the amounts and sources of plastics reaching the oceans, and (focusing on microplastics) the processes by which they may be trapped and accumulate in river, coastal and marine environments, their potential impacts, current knowledge gaps, and methods of reducing the ocean plastic burden.
Bio:
Andy is a Professor in Geochemistry and Director of Internationalisation in the School of Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton, at the UK’s National Oceanography Centre (Southampton). He has over 30 years’ research experience in the environmental cycling and behaviour of aquatic and terrestrial pollutants (metal, organic, plastic and radioactive contaminants); environmental geology; contaminated land, wastes and water management; and estuarine and coastal processes.
Andy has worked across four continents in projects funded by government, environmental bodies, the European Union and private industry, and has published over 140 scientific papers. His interests in riverine and marine plastics date from 2016, and involve research on tracking the transport and accumulation processes of plastics from river and coast to sea.