Whales, waste and sea walnuts: incorporating human impacts on the marine ecosystem within life cycle impact assessment
Marine Pollution Bulletin. Volume 223, February 2026
Ahmed Marhoon, Erin L. Murphy, Marthe Alnes Høiberg, Jan Borgelt, Martin Dorber, Francesca Verones
Plastic debris ingestion poses a significant and increasing threat to marine biodiversity and ecosystem health. Despite the increasing evidence of its prevalence and severity, plastic ingestion impacts remain limited in widely adopted environmental assessment tools such as Life Cycle Assessment. To fill this gap, we propose a global effect factor to quantify the potentially affected fraction of species (PAF) impacted by macro- and microplastics ingestion in marine air-breathing vertebrates (marine mammals, seabirds, and sea turtles). [...]Read more
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Fisheries Research. Volume 292, December 2025
Dorian Vodopia, Francesca Verones, Cecilia Askham, Roger B. Larsen
Ghost fishing, the incidental capture of marine organisms by abandoned, lost and discarded fishing gear (ALDFG), poses a significant threat to marine ecosystems and biodiversity. Yet, comprehensive data on the ghost fishing catch in Norwegian waters, remains largely unavailable. To contribute to filling this data gap, we analyzed data from seven years (2018–2024) of retrieval operations targeting commercial derelict fishing gear. The ghost fishing catch consisted predominantly of Greenland halibut (Reinhardtius hippoglossoides), Northeast Arctic cod (Gadus morhua), edible crab (Cancer pagurus), red king crab (Paralithodes camtschaticus), and snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio). [...]Read more
Marine Pollution Bulletin. Volume 215, June 2025
Marthe A. Høiberg, Jan Borgelt, Philip S. Mostert, Shawn K. Murakawa, Summer L. Martin, Jon Gelman, Jennifer M. Lynch, Francesca Verones
Stranding data are critical for monitoring threats to sea turtles. By analyzing four decades of green turtle (Chelonia mydas) strandings from the Main Hawaiian Islands, we elucidate temporal and spatial trends. In Hawai'i, fibropapillomatosis (FP) has been the dominant threat for stranded turtles since records began in 1982. In the last decade (2010–2019), FP constituted on average 25 % of stressors in stranded turtles, followed by fishing lines (22 %), hooks (8 %), shark predation (5 %), boat strikes (5 %), and net entanglements (3 %). [...]Read more
Environmental Advances. Volume 17, October 2024
Naiara Casagrande, Francesca Verones, Paula Sobral, Graça Martinho
The physical properties of microplastics, such as size, type, polymer and chemical composition, affect their level of toxicity once ingested by aquatic species. Therefore, to be able to produce environmental relevant ecotoxicity data, laboratory tests should take these properties into consideration as well as in the calculation of effect factors for the Life Cycle Assessment methodology. In this study, we reviewed papers estimating ecotoxicity of microplastics ingested by species under laboratory conditions as well as data on microplastics ingested by species sampled from the field. [...]Read more
Science of The Total Environment. Volume 949, November 2024
Marthe A. Høiberg, Konstantin Stadler, Francesca Verones
Inputs of persistent plastic items to marine environments continue to pose a serious and long-term threat to marine fauna and ecosystem health, justifying further interventions on local and global scales. While Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is frequently used for sustainability evaluations by industries and policymakers, plastic leakage to the environment and its subsequent impacts remains absent from the framework. Incorporating plastic pollution in the assessments requires development of both inventories and impact assessment methods. [...]Read more
The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, Volume 29, Mai 2024
Philip Gjedde, Fabio Carrer, Johan Berg Pettersen, Francesca Verones
Marine vertebrate populations have halved in the past decades, and invasive species are a major driver for this loss. While many model the spread of invasive species, a model to assess impacts of marine invasions, after introduction, has hitherto been missing. We present the first regionalized effect factors for marine invasions. These factors gauge differences in biodiversity impacts after invasions, enabling life cycle impact assessments to highlight biodiversity impacts from invasive species. [...]Read more
Environmental Science and Technology, Volume 58, Mai 2024
Ahmed Marhoon, Miguel Las Heras Hernandez, Romain G. Billy, Daniel Beat Müller, Francesca Verones
The growing environmental consequences caused by plastic pollution highlight the need for a better understanding of plastic polymer cycles and their associated additives. We present a novel, comprehensive top-down method using inflow-driven dynamic probabilistic material flow analysis (DPMFA) to map the plastic cycle in coastal countries. [...]Read more
Environmental Pollution, Volume 341, January 2024
Naiara Casagrande, Carla O. Silva, Francesca Verones, Paula Sobral, Graça Martinho
All plastic contains additives. Once in the environment, these will start to leach out and will expose and harm aquatic biota, causing potentially lethal and sub-lethal toxic effects. Even though life cycle assessment covers the toxic impacts of several thousands of chemicals, models to assess the toxic impacts of plastic additives are only emerging. [...]Read more
Ecosphere, Volume 14, november 2023
Francesca Verones, Philip Gjedde, Maximilian Koslowski, John S. Woods, Radek Lonka, Konstantin Stadler
Invasive species are the second most important reason for species extinction since 1500 ad. In addition, these invasive species can cause vast economic loss. In marine ecoregions, alien species introductions are increasing, and those that become invasive have caused profound changes in many marine ecoregions. [...]Read more
Ecological Indicators, Volume 135, February 2022
Marthe A.Høiberg, John S.Woods, FrancescaVerones
Marine animals have been known to interact with and become entangled in plastic debris for decades. Despite increasing annual input volumes of plastic waste to the natural environment and the threat this constitutes to marine biodiversity, impacts of mismanaged plastic waste generally remain unquantified in environmental impact assessments. [...]Read more
Ecological Indicators, Volume 99, April 2019, Pages 61-66
John S. Woods, Gorm Rødder, Francesca Verones
Plastic waste from anthropogenic activities is accumulating in the marine environment and poses a threat to marine biodiversity. Nevertheless, tools to assess the potential ecosystem damage from plastic waste are currently lacking from sustainability assessment approaches, such as life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies. [...]Read more
Ecological Indicators 129 (2021) 107918
John S. Woods, Francesca Verones, Olivier Jolliet, Ian Vázquez-Rowe, Anne-Marie Boulay
Marine litter, mostly plastics, is a growing environmental problem. Environmental decision makers are beginning to take actions and implement regulations that aim to reduce plastic use and waste mismanagement. Nevertheless, life cycle assessment (LCA), a tool commonly used to assist environmental decision making, does not yet allow for considering the consequences of plastic waste leaked into the environment. [...] Read more
The Journal of Open Source Software
Radek Lonka, Francesca Verones, and Konstantin Stadler
The introduction and establishment of alien (non-native) species to foreign ecosystems is a key threat for marine biodiversity [...] Read more
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 850717).
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