This National Science Foundation (NSF) Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) Project Grant award of $231,803 to the Research Foundation of the City University of New York (RFCUNY) provides mentored undergraduate research opportunities focused on studying microplastics in the Finger Lakes watershed of New York. The 3-year project will engage college sophomores in field research to identify sources, sinks, transport, and environmental impacts of microplastics in the local water systems. Students...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) provides $358,976 to Hobart & William Smith Colleges to conduct collaborative research on microplastic sources, transport, and environmental impact across the Finger Lakes watershed in New York. The 3-year project offers mentored research opportunities for college sophomores, who will learn to design research projects, collect field data, and analyze microplastic samples using advanced equipment....
The National Science Foundation awarded a two-year, $174,000 Project Grant to Princeton University under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050). The grant will fund research examining the effect of environmental conditions on the degradation pathways and sorption potential of microplastics and nanoplastics as vectors for inorganic pollution. The Geosciences program supports basic research to strengthen understanding of Earth's integrated system through atmospheric, earth, and ocean sciences. This...
The National Science Foundation awarded a $243,076 Project Grant to Northeastern University under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) for the period of September 1, 2021 through August 31, 2023. The grant will support the collaborative research project "Assessing the Contribution of Plastics to Marine Particulate Organic Carbon." The Geosciences program seeks to expand fundamental knowledge and understanding of the integrated Earth system through basic research in atmospheric, earth,...
This three-year, $459,000 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) will fund research into the origins and mitigation of secondary microplastics and nanoplastics pollution. The grantee, Columbia University, will combine experimental and theoretical tools to elucidate the degradation mechanisms of semicrystalline polymers when exposed to mechanical forces, water, air and UV light. This work aims to delineate the critical physics...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences awarded a $346,823 Project Grant to the Regents of the University of Colorado (doing business as the University of Colorado) to conduct research under the NSF Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050). This research project aims to better understand how transformations to microplastics in coastal environments impact their regional-scale transport and fate. The study will use Lagrangian tracers and existing hydrodynamic modeling to quantify...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) will support a collaborative research project titled "Nutrient-Mediated Interactions Between Plastic-Derived Dissolved Organic Carbon and the Biological Carbon Pump". The $665,899 award will fund research to explore how bacteria in ocean surface waters consume plastic-derived organic matter, potentially competing with phytoplankton for key nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. The...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) will fund a five-year research project at Cornell University focused on understanding the fate and transport of microplastics and their interactions with potentially toxic halogenated organic compounds (HOCs) in soil and groundwater environments. The $558,556 award will support a series of laboratory experiments to evaluate the impacts of aged and weathered microplastics on HOC...
This National Science Foundation Project Grant of $159,763 will fund research on the surface properties and transport of micro- and nanoplastics in unsaturated soil. The University of Tennessee will receive funding through the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) to better understand how micro- and nanoplastics weather and move through soils. Specifically, the researchers will characterize how four common plastics - polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, and a biodegradable plastic - change at...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) Project Grant award of $299,999.00 to Iowa State University (ISU) aims to investigate the physical processes involved in the trapping of microplastic particles in riverbeds. The research leverages synergistic pore-resolving direct numerical simulations and theoretical modeling to reveal the microscopic effects at the pore level and derive predictive models for microplastic retention rates. This research will enable a more...
This $300,000 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) will support research to determine the impact of microplastics on the distribution of naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes in the marine environment. The University of Rochester will lead this 2-year project, which aims to quantify the association of select particle-reactive radioisotopes with plastics through a combination of laboratory experiments and field work at coastal and open ocean locations. The research will assess whether plastics have the potential to impact radioisotope distributions and if they could transport "inherited" radioisotope signals differently than natural particles. The project will facilitate the training of graduate and undergraduate researchers, as well as engage local high school students through educational workshops. The findings from this work will provide a baseline for oceanographers to account for the potential "plastics effect" on commonly used marine tracers, contributing to better understanding of the significance of plastics for various elemental cycles.