Workshop – Microplastics in the Soil

Microplastics are substances increasingly hazardously affecting our environment. In the area of aquatic ecosystems, they have already been receiving considerable attention from scientists, but the issues related to soils have so far been relatively neglected due to the complexity of the research, although the environment is heavily contaminated by them. This situation should be improved by the SOPLAS (Macro and Microplastic in Agricultural Soil Systems) Project, which involves 14 top workplaces from all over Europe and will be running from 2021 to 2024. Its objective is to monitor the whole process covering microplastics from their origin, through their behaviour in the soil, potential accumulation in the biomass or, on the contrary, their decomposition to their movement within the soil profile together with water, their release into the aquatic environment and transport within the river basin.

The first joint workshop, organized by the Faculty of Civil Engineering CTU in Prague from 13^th to 17^th September 2021, will be attended by thirty specialists representing different fields of science, part of them meeting directly in Prague, and others participating on-line.

The SOPLAS Project has been conceived within the H2020 ITN programme – Marie Currie, ITN, No. 955334, which focuses on the training of high skilled doctoral candidates. The research will, therefore, be primarily within their own responsibilities. In order to assemble a team in an international environment and achieve international cooperation, a Ph.D. student from a country other than their home country will be represented in the project for each of the participating institutions. At the Faculty of Civil Engineering CTU in Prague, for example, a student from India, who has been awarded the Master’s degree at a prestigious joint study programme of several major European universities, should be involved.