Fractionation of Anthropogenic Particles (Microplastics and Microfibers) along a 2200 km Transect of Canadian Sediments
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Our research suggests that anthropogenic particles (AP), a suite of contaminant particles that originate from human activities including microplastics and microfibers, can undergo geographic fractionation during long-range transport from populated source regions to remote receptor regions. Assemblages of microplastics, microfibers, and other AP (>125 μm) in surficial sediments spanning a 2200 km transect had the most diverse shapes, colors, and polymer types in populated source regions, as illustrated by the Greater Toronto Area and Laurentian Great Lakes, and were least diverse in remote Hudson Bay and Arctic Ocean samples. We hypothesize that differences in diversity are due to a fractionation process where transport from source regions is controlled predictably by differential AP mobility. Specifically, microfibers consisting of anthropogenic cellulose and polyester were found to accumulate in the remote regions of the Arctic, indicating their mobility, which enables long-range transport, consistent with their higher buoyancy in air and water. Conversely, nonfibrous particles (i.e., fragments, films, foams) settled closer to sources, consistent with lower mobility due to faster settling velocities and the likelihood of fragmentation. As with other contaminants, control measures to mitigate and reduce AP discharges in populated urbanized regions will mitigate AP contamination in the Arctic and other remote areas, particularly for the most highly mobile microfibers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".