Project Leader: Francesca Verones
A project in the Interdisciplinary Sustainable Initiatives at NTNU

Table of Contents

In a nutshell

• Understand how and where plastic is distributing.
• To what degree of degradation microbial communities have an impact on the plastics.
• What alternative options to minimize the use and mismanagement of plastic exist.
• Focus on environmental impacts in Trondheimsfjord in Norway, combining filed studies, laboratory studies and computer modelling in an interdisciplinary approach.

Job description

1. Modelling plastic debris transport and accumulation
   Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
   The aim is to develop a numerical model cascade predicting the transport and accumulation of plastic debris along with their transport pathways from source to sink. We will focus on identifying pathways and repositories of marine plastic waste. The numerical modelling is based on the open-source hydrodynamics framework REEF3D.
2. Plastics in sediments
   Department of Geography
   The aim is to map and sample marine plastic debris in Trondheimsfjord and the outer, central coast of Norway. Strong connections to the other 3 positions exist through ground-truthing, assessing the role of microbial communities and determining the sources and types of plastic debris in the study area.
3. Microbial biofilms and degradation processes on microplastic debris
   Department of Biology
   The aim is to characterize microbial biofilms in relation to plastic type/age and to assess their impact on the degree of plastic degradation by considering environmental conditions, plastic type, and surface characteristics. The position involves both fieldwork in Trondheimsfjorden and the Froan archipelago and laboratory analyses.
4. Origin and impacts of plastic products
   Department of Energy and Process Engineering
   The PhD student will adopt, apply, and further develop life cycle impact assessment models for quantifying impacts from plastic entanglement and ingestion to the plastic amounts found in Norway to estimate the impacts of macro- and microplastics on the marine ecosystem. The PhD student will therefore also contribute to and profit from work in the ongoing ATLANTIS project (www.atlantis-erc.eu). The idea of this PhD project is to derive species-sensitivity distributions and derive characterization factors for use in LCA that are specific to Norway and its ecosystem. The results of the LCA studies will show where and what the largest impacts are. Life cycle scenarios of possible interventions, such as replacing plastic with alternative materials, increased re-use and chemical conversion capacity, will help to identify the largest potentials for counteracting and mitigating plastic pollution in Norway.