A multicampus, interdisciplinary team
We are an interdisciplinary, multi-campus team of researchers interested in understanding the abundance, distribution, and diversity of microplastic pollution across our planet. While we were birthed by university researchers from campuses across the California State Univeristy System, our evolving collaboration includes folks from numerous universities, non-governmental organizations, and public agencies. While our primary suite of expertise spans ecology, ecotoxicology, chemistry, biomechanics, meta analysis, and quantifying environmental stressors, we also increasingly partner with policy makers and management agencies interested in reducing microplastic inputs. Our core group (spanning CSU Channel Islands, CSU Long Beach, CSU Fullerton, and Cal Poly Pomona) formed in a networking workshop in December of 2017 sponsored by the Ocean Studies Institute. Many of our members and research labs are central to the state of California’s current blueprint for reducing marine pollution over the coming decade (the 2018 California Ocean Litter Prevention Strategy), formally identified as both lead and partner organizations for dozens of state objectives and action items. More recently, our efforts have also been supported by the Council on Ocean Affairs, Science & Technology (CSU COAST), the CSU’s specialty/umbrella organization facilitating marine, coastal, and coastal watershed related activities across the state of California.
Our original working group
- CSU Channel Islands, Environmental Science and Resource Management (ESRM) Program
- CSU Long Beach, Biology Department
- CSU Fullerton, Biology Department
- Cal Poly Pomona, Biology Department
