{"id":208338,"date":"2025-03-11T11:14:51","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T16:14:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/a-global-estimate-of-multiecosystem-photosynthesis-losses-under-microplastic-pollution"},"modified":"2025-03-11T11:14:51","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T16:14:51","slug":"a-global-estimate-of-multiecosystem-photosynthesis-losses-under-microplastic-pollution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/a-global-estimate-of-multiecosystem-photosynthesis-losses-under-microplastic-pollution","title":{"rendered":"A global estimate of multiecosystem photosynthesis losses under microplastic pollution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-global-estimate-of-multiecosystem-photosynthesis-losses-under-microplastic-pollution2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Understanding how ecosystems respond to ubiquitous microplastic (MP) pollution is crucial for ensuring global food security. Here, we conduct a multiecosystem meta-analysis of 3,286 data points and reveal that MP exposure leads to a global reduction in photosynthesis of 7.05 to 12.12% in terrestrial plants, marine algae, and freshwater algae. These reductions align with those estimated by a constructed machine learning model using current MP pollution levels, showing that MP exposure reduces the chlorophyll content of photoautotrophs by 10.96 to 12.84%. Model estimates based on the identified MP-photosynthesis nexus indicate annual global losses of 4.11 to 13.52% (109.73 to 360.87 MT\u00b7y<sup>\u22121<\/sup>) for main crops and 0.31 to 7.24% (147.52 to 3415.11 MT C\u00b7y<sup>\u22121<\/sup>) for global aquatic net primary productivity induced by MPs. Under scenarios of efficient plastic mitigation, e.g.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Understanding how ecosystems respond to ubiquitous microplastic (MP) pollution is crucial for ensuring global food security. Here, we conduct a multiecosystem meta-analysis of 3,286 data points and reveal that MP exposure leads to a global reduction in photosynthesis of 7.05 to 12.12% in terrestrial plants, marine algae, and freshwater algae. These reductions align with those [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1506,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}