Gone are the days when research was conducted in silos. This is especially the case with transboundary environmental problems, such as the contamination of terrestrial, aquatic and marine environments with microplastics. Data collection in the modern age is not just the domain of scientists, government workers and other professions, but also members of the public and community organisations - often referred to as ‘citizen scientists’. People from all walks of life are working together with the collective goal of understanding and managing pollution in our shared environment. To this end, clearly identifying the goals of the research or monitoring project, and determining who will be the likely users of the information generated, are important first steps before embarking down the path of sample and data collection.
Common immediate goals might include investigating:
- What is the accumulation of microplastics in a specific environmental compartment or geographic area?
- Are there variations in microplastic accumulation in space or time?
- What are the sources (provenance) and fate of environmental microplastic?
- What are the potential effects and risk of microplastics?
- How many and what type of microplastics are organisms consuming?
- How are organisms impacted when consuming microplastic?
End users of the collected data might include:
- You and other members of your research team, university or organisation conducting research, teaching or community engagement activities.
- Other universities or organisations seeking to compare findings.
- Community groups, advocates and politicians seeking to understand microplastics in their local context and drive change.
- Local, state and federal levels of the Australian government seeking to measure, monitor or manage microplastic in their jurisdictions.
- Stakeholders aiming to assess the success of implemented actions (punctual or diffused) to help address microplastic contamination.
- Businesses seeking to understand the impacts of microplastic contamination and make changes to their operations.
- International or multilateral research groups, intergovernmental panels and non-government organisations seeking to understand the scale of microplastic issues and identify targets for management.
Researchers should also consider Indigenous leadership and collaboration as related to Sea Country.
Because the goals of data collection, studied habitats and end users of information are so diverse, different groups often “speak different languages” when it comes to microplastic sampling, including laboratory procedures, quality control and data reporting, which potentially leads to a loss in research value (e.g., time and resources invested in data collection) and an inability to leverage data usage, limiting spatial and temporal comparisons of microplastics.
Harmonisation is a concept that acknowledges methodological differences between studies while also ensuring data are collected and reported according to a set of essential, minimum standard criteria and workflows, to enable groups with different goals to generate transferable information. Not all existing methods are scientifically robust, therefore before embarking on new sample and data collection activities, we recommend identifying appropriate methods that will support harmonisation of outputs. This document presents methods that will increase the comparability of the data you collect with other microplastic information gathered in Australia and across the world.