Crossing Into Vancouver, BC, Is Easy. Don't Forget Your Passport
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Crossing into Vancouver, BC, is easy. Don’t forget your passport. Tourism Vancouver / Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. JUNE | VOL. 24, 2014 6 NO. A PUBLICATION OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA® JUNE 2014 | VOLUME 24, NUMBER 6 Featured Article GSA TODAY (ISSN 1052-5173 USPS 0456-530) prints news and information for more than 26,000 GSA member readers and subscribing libraries, with 11 monthly issues (April/ May is a combined issue). GSA TODAY is published by The SCIENCE: Geological Society of America® Inc. (GSA) with offices at 3300 Penrose Place, Boulder, Colorado, USA, and a mail- 4 An anthropogenic marker horizon in the future ing address of P.O. Box 9140, Boulder, CO 80301-9140, USA. rock record GSA provides this and other forums for the presentation of diverse opinions and positions by scientists worldwide, Patricia L. Corcoran, Charles J. Moore, and regardless of race, citizenship, gender, sexual orientation, Kelly Jazvac religion, or political viewpoint. Opinions presented in this publication do not reflect official positions of the Society. Cover: Plastiglomerate fragments interspersed with plastic debris, © 2014 The Geological Society of America Inc. All rights organic material, and sand on Kamilo Beach, Hawaii. Photo by K. Jazvac. reserved. Copyright not claimed on content prepared See related article, p. 4–8. wholly by U.S. government employees within the scope of their employment. Individual scientists are hereby granted permission, without fees or request to GSA, to use a single figure, table, and/or brief paragraph of text in subsequent work and to make/print unlimited copies of items in GSA TODAY for noncommercial use in classrooms to further education and science. 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Main Street, MSC 6903, Building and Maintaining Infrastructure Harrisonburg, VA 22807, USA, [email protected] 36 GSA Division Awards Managing Editor: K.E.A. “Kea” Giles, [email protected], [email protected] 38 Call for Committee Service Graphics Production: Margo McGrew 40 GSA Foundation Update Advertising (classifieds & display): Ann Crawford, +1-800-472-1988 ext. 1053; +1-303-357-1053; Fax: +1-303- 42 Classifi ed Advertising 357-1070; [email protected]; acrawford@ geosociety.org 45 Letter GSA Online: www.geosociety.org GSA TODAY: www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/ Printed in the USA using pure soy inks. An anthropogenic marker horizon in the future rock record Patricia L. Corcoran, Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of microplastics into fish. The unknown effect on apex predators, Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5B7, pcorcor@ such as humans, is a major concern. These POPs, such as poly- uwo.ca; Charles J. Moore, Algalita Marine Research Institute, chlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), can cause serious health effects, as Long Beach, California, 90803-4601, USA; and Kelly Jazvac, Dept. they have been shown to be endocrine-disrupting chemicals and of Visual Arts, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, carcinogens (Bergman et al., 2013). Canada, N6A 5B7 The degradation of plastic material is a slow process that can occur mechanically, chemically (thermo- or photo-oxidative), and to a lesser degree, biologically (Kulshreshtha, 1992; Shah et ABSTRACT al., 2008; Cooper and Corcoran, 2010). The persistence of plastic Recognition of increasing plastic debris pollution over the last in the environment has been estimated to be in the range of several decades has led to investigations of the imminent hundreds to thousands of years, although longevity can increase dangers posed to marine organisms and their ecosystems, but in cool climates and where material is buried on the ocean bottom very little is known about the preservation potential of plastics or under sediment (Gregory and Andrady, 2003). A recent study in the rock record. As anthropogenically derived materials, plas- examining the accumulation of marine ocean debris at depths of tics are astonishingly abundant in oceans, seas, and lakes, where 25–3971 m over a 22-year period shows that 33% of all debris in they accumulate at or near the water surface, on lake and ocean Monterey Bay, California, USA, is composed of plastic litter bottoms, and along shorelines. The burial potential of plastic (Schlining et al., 2013). Similar results from other localities reveal debris is chiefly dependent on the material’s density and abun- that much of plastic debris is below the water surface (Goldberg, dance, in addition to the depositional environment. Here, we 1997; Galgani et al., 2000; Keller et al., 2010). This debris may be report the appearance of a new “stone” formed through inter- composed of high-density plastics or low-density plastics with mingling of melted plastic, beach sediment, basaltic lava frag- fouled surfaces (Ye and Andrady, 1991; Goldberg, 1997; Gregory, ments, and organic debris from Kamilo Beach on the island of 2009; Lobelle and Cunliffe, 2011). Given the low water tempera- Hawaii. The material, herein referred to as “plastiglomerate,” is tures and decreased exposure to UV light at greater depths within divided into in situ and clastic types that were distributed over and below the photic zone, sunken plastic debris has good poten- all areas of the beach. Agglutination of natural sediments to tial to persist and eventually form part of the rock record. On melted plastic during campfire burning has increased the overall beaches, plastic debris, such as resin pellets, fragments, and density of plastiglomerate, which inhibits transport by wind or expanded polystyrene up to 11 mm in size, may be preserved water, thereby increasing the potential for burial and subsequent within the upper 5 cm of beach sediment (Kusui and Noda, 2003). preservation. Our results indicate that this anthropogenically Claessens et al. (2011) identified microplastics in beach sediment influenced material has great potential to form a marker horizon cores at depths down to 32 cm. In addition, Fisner et al. (2013), in of human pollution, signaling the occurrence of the informal their study of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in pellets, were Anthropocene epoch. able to locate plastic debris at sediment depths as great as 1 m. However, we found no visible loose plastic fragments at depths INTRODUCTION >10 cm in sand on Kamilo Beach, Hawaii. Given the beach’s Plastics, or synthetic organic polymers, are lightweight, durable constant exposure to the northeasterly trade winds, much of the products that are used for a number of consumer and non- small (<10 cm), lightweight plastic debris is blown to the back- consumer goods (Barnes et al., 2009). As anthropogenically shore environment, where it becomes trapped in vegetation. On a derived materials, plastics only began to appear in the 1950s, with beach as dynamic as Kamilo, preservation of plastics in the sedi- production and disposal rates increasing steadily over the past 60 ment column could occur where trapped sediment is covered with years (Ryan and Moloney, 1993; Moore, 2008). Combined with sand or where a polymer is combined with a much denser mate- abysmal rates of recovery, a massive amount of plastic debris has rial. We observed the results of this density increase on Kamilo accumulated in Earth’s waterways and along shorelines (Derraik, Beach, where great quantities of melted plastic have mixed with 2002; Thompson et al., 2004; Corcoran et al., 2009; Law et al., the substrate to create new fragments of much greater density, 2010). These plastics have been proven dangerous to marine herein referred to as “plastiglomerate.” organisms and seabirds through ingestion, entanglement, and disruption of feeding patterns (Laist, 1997; Eriksson and Burton, CHARACTERISTICS OF KAMILO BEACH 2014 2003; Boren et al., 2006; Gregory, 2009; Aloy et al., 2011). In addi- The location of the Hawaiian Islands within the North Pacific tion, adsorption of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) onto plas- subtropical gyre makes them vulnerable to acting as sinks for tics (Mato et al., 2001; Endo et al., 2005; Rios et al., 2007, 2010) plastic debris (Moore, 2008). The anticyclonic movement of enhances the potential for bioaccumulation from ingested surface ocean currents within the gyre results in preferential GSA TODAY | JUNE GSA Today, v. 24, no. 6, doi: 10.1130/GSAT-G198A.1. 4 Figure 1. Location and characteristics of Kamilo Beach. (A) Location of Kamilo Beach along the southeast shore of the island of Hawaii (satellite image of 13 Dec. 2002, available at http://visibleearth.nasa.gov). (B) Sampling locations along the Kamilo Beach shoreline (Pacific Ocean east of the dark line). (C) Plastic “confetti” trapped within vegetation.