Arianna Varrani

Microplastics are becoming a part of the fluvial and marine sedimentary processes. Knowledge on the transport processes of such artificial particles is in its infancy and it has not yet been framed into the more structured (and aged) sediment transport knowledge. Key research gap in sedimentary studies is the low variability in the density of the sedimentary materials as well as the (until lately unneeded) description of density sorting. Sorting by density is a key process for plastics, as well as other both natural and anthropogenic materials and it is expected to have a key role in describing transport processes of such media. The problem of plastic pollution is an outstanding example for the need to develop a model which has wide application, and the study of microplastics' onset of transport is the first step in that regard.

My research aims at defining a framework for microplastics sedimentary processes, with specific focus on the onset of transport. The data produced could be used to benchmark and test numerical models and the methodology adopted (rather classical) can be easily transferred to other settings to build up more robust models for the transport of different types of sedimentary materials.

Laboratory experiments constitute the basis of my approach. We use rather classical methods to measure the hydrodynamics /like acoustic measurements) and couple them with image-based methods to retrieve the quantity of plastic grains detached from the bed.

Achieve a description of microplastics mobilisation comparable to clastic sediments' description and include microplastics studies into sedimentary processes studies. Some way to go here still.