Regional Mountain Conference

In the past few years, the awareness about microplastics (MP) in the environment has evolved extremely fast. The topic is omnipresent when media report about enormous amounts of plastics in the sea. However, microplastic pollution did not make a halt in front of seemingly inaccessible areas such as high alpine areas. Sources thereof are manifold and can locally be attributed to skiing tourism, construction activities in high altitudes and the connected gastronomy. Additionally, there are also long-range sources from where particles by airborne transport are manifested in ice and snow. In glacial skiing areas those emissions add on by the local usage of geotextiles in order to reduce albedo. Large areas covered by geotextiles are emission sources for polypropylene fibers which remain in high altitudes and can have an impact on water quality, aquatic and terrestrial living communities. MP particles are also connected with additives which alter soils, waters and the communities living therein. Additionally, microbial communities in contact to MP particles can react with an increased expression of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). The threat of water quality deterioration requires a shift in the overall awareness towards this issue which should result in a sustainable change of behaviour in our plastic consumption. To enhance data availability in the Alpine space a Citizen Science approach has been chosen to include the general public, also to raise awareness for this issue. Via a low-threshold contribution with a littering app (Dreckspotz) solid data could be collected for areas above 1.000m asl. Our goal is to achieve new measures together with stakeholders and politicians in the sense of sustainable handling of sensitive ecosystems such as high alpine regions, especially in context with water quality.