Marine plastic pollution (MPP) is an urgent sustainability challenge. In 2016 alone, between 19.3 and 23.4 million metric tons of plastic entered aquatic ecosystems (Borrelle et al., 2020). This pollution has environmental, economic, and social consequences (Beaumont et al., 2019), which have inspired global stakeholder action (Xanthos and Walker, 2017; Schnurr et al., 2018). Still, even if these ambitious actions are achieved, plastic pollution emissions will continue to rise due to increased production (Borrelle et al., 2020). As MPP continues to increase, so will its social, ecological, and economic consequences (Beaumont et al., 2019).

Current management efforts for MPP are often ad hoc, without consideration for decision-makers’ goals, scale of governance, context of implementation, or systematic coordination across scales and sectors (Excell et al., 2018). Intervention efficacy is rarely evaluated and evaluated interventions report mixed outcomes (Excell et al., 2018). For example, bag regulations are among the most popular policies for plastics across the globe, yet less than half have been evaluated for effectiveness in reducing bag consumption, and 40% of evaluated policies have achieved little to no impact (Excell et al., 2018). In general, the effectiveness of popular interventions—bag bans and levies, deposit refund schemes, and dumping fines—are conditional on the context of implementation, including governance, socio-economic status, and environmental conditions (Lavee, 2010; McIlgorm et al., 2011; Oosterhuis et al., 2014; Excell et al., 2018).

Effectively implemented policies may still fail to reduce MPP. Research has shown that even if the most ambitious global commitments are achieved, annual plastic emissions will continue increase due to increased production driven by global development and population growth (Borrelle et al., 2020). This indicates that the suite of solutions being implemented are largely insufficient for addressing the primary sources and environmental pathways of MPP.

Finally, effective policy must ultimately reduce the social and ecological consequences of MPP, which depend on how MPP interacts with social and ecological communities. Not all ecosystems are equally vulnerable to MPP, and marine regions vary in their social and economical importance (Murphy et al. in review ; Beaumont et al., 2019; Armoškaitė et al., 2020). As a result, policy effectiveness should not only be measured by MPP reduction, but also by social-ecological outcomes.

Failure to mitigate MPP and its consequences through current efforts has fueled calls for transformative, system-wide change along the entire plastics’ life cycle (Borrelle et al., 2020; Raubenheimer and Urho, 2020). This will require action across scales of governance that not only consider policy objectives, but also feasibility, cost, trade-offs, and efficacy for mitigating the social, ecological, and economic consequences of MPP (Tessnow-von Wysocki and Le Billon, 2019; Murphy et al., 2021; Helm et al., 2022). This approach must 1) be transdisciplinary, 2) be multi-scale, 3) be spatially-explicit, and 4) encompass the entire plastic-scape—which includes all the governance systems, human actors, and ecological components (i.e., abiotic, and biotic processes) that contribute to patterns of plastic production, use, and pollution, as well as the interactions between MPP and human and natural communities that drive its social and ecological consequences (Figure 1).

Landscape ecology (LE) provides a spatially explicit, multi-scale approach for understanding social-ecological landscapes that is well-suited for MPP research and management (Wu, 2013; Opdam et al., 2018). LE draws on natural and human ecology, geography, history, economics, and wildlife management to understand the relationship between pattern and process in the environment (Risser et al., 1984; Wu, 2013). Historically, European LE focused on human landscapes and solutions-oriented questions, while North American LE aimed to advance quantitative methods for understanding natural systems (Wu and Hobbs, 2002). The integration of these approaches provides theory, principles, methods, and tools for studying complex and spatially explicit environmental challenges (Wu, 2013). Additionally, LE’s contributions to sustainability science, environmental management, and conservation demonstrate its value in achieving conservation outcomes (Wu, 2006; Opdam et al., 2018).

More recently, seascape ecology (SE) has emerged (Pittman, 2018). Like LE, it is well-suited to support sustainability science and has informed several marine conservation issues (e.g., habitat restoration, marine planning), but its application to MPP has been limited (Fraschetti et al., 2009; Stamoulis and Friedlander, 2013; Rees et al., 2018).

SE offers a multi-scale approach for understanding and evaluating the plastic-scape (Cumming et al., 2017; Opdam et al., 2018). Below, we explore opportunities for applying SE to MPP research and management.

A seascape ecology approach can help address the shortcomings of the current approach by providing a framework that 1) is spatially explicit, to account for context of implementation, 2) is holistic and multi-scale, to ensure that the sum of individual interventions is enough to address this global challenge, and 3) integrates social and ecological outcomes.

The maturation of SE has promoted the emergence of seascape specific principles, tools, and methods to capture the dynamic and three-dimensional structure of the seascape, which is necessary for understanding MPP (Wedding et al., 2011; Kavanaugh et al., 2016; Lepczyk et al., 2021; Swanborn et al., 2022). It has also sparked interest in novel research priorities—seascape connectivity; seascape goods and services; ecosystem-based management; and applications for marine management (Pittman et al., 2021). This has driven novel approaches for evaluating these seascape components, which are important aspects of the plastic-scape that have been difficult to quantify (Grober-Dunsmore et al., 2009; Halpern et al., 2010; Barbier and Lee, 2014; Urlich et al., 2022).

Landscape sustainability science, another emerging subdiscipline, aims to understand how landscape structure and elements influence the sustainability of real-world landscapes, including biodiversity, ecological processes, ecosystem services, and human wellbeing (Wu, 2021). To center human dimensions of the landscape, the landscape sustainability science framework captures a broader set of landscape pattern drivers than traditional LE—socioeconomic, political, technological, natural, and cultural—all of which are important in the plastic-scape (Bürgi et al., 2005). Further, landscape sustainability science is inherently transdisciplinary and applied. Therefore, approaches from this field can be used to inform transdisciplinary research and management approaches for the plastic-scape (Wu, 2021).

Below, we describe the ways SE principles can inform our understanding of the plastic-scape, describe applicable methods and tools for evaluating the plastic-scape, and discuss how LE and SE transdisciplinary research approaches can improve research and management.

Generally, an SE approach should be applied to answer spatially explicit, place-based questions about patterns in the plastic-scape, and the processes that drive them, with a focus on informing management. Since MPP is primarily land-based, characterizing connectivity between terrestrial and marine systems is critical. Hydrological models have already been applied to identify MPP leakage patterns and particular rivers as management priorities (Lebreton et al., 2017; Windsor et al., 2019; Correa-Araneda et al., 2022). Future research could explore different scales and processes to identify other contributors to leakage patterns.

Researchers should also explore how seascape configuration influences MPP pathways and patterns. For example, certain habitats act as plastic sinks (Martin et al., 2020; Sanchez-Vidal et al., 2021). Research on the relationship between seascape configuration and MPP deposition can be used to predict MPP patterns and inform management priorities.

Future work could also employ social sensing—the characterization of human components of the plastic-scape (Liu et al., 2015). Integration of human activity and social data into MPP maps and models could provide more insight into anthropogenic pathways of MPP leakage and the efficacy of different management efforts.

Finally, research to inform and evaluate management should be prioritized. For example, researchers can employ predictive spatial models to compare outcomes associated with various intervention strategies and inform a multi-scale management plan that integrates action across levels of governance. SE approaches could also provide baselines, allowing researchers to better monitor changes in plastic-scape patterns to evaluate management efficacy (Maximenko et al., 2019).

Using the tools of SE, researchers can better understand the plastic-scape; however, this approach has limitations. The primary limitation is technological. To date, remote sensing has only been used to quantify surficial MPP (Goddijn-Murphy and Williamson, 2019). Additionally, satellite data typically has a resolution of >1 meter, which is too coarse to detect most MPP. Though alternatives exist, they can be expensive (e.g., aerial imaging and high spectral sensors), inconsistent (e.g., thermal infrared sensing), or range limited (e.g., drones) (Goddijn-Murphy and Williamson, 2019; Salgado-Hernanz et al., 2021). However, as technology improves and data collection becomes easier, the value of employing an SE approach will continue to increase.

Second, land-based pollution is not a research priority in SE (Pittman et al., 2021). Further, plastic pollution is a non-point source pollutant with a complex life cycle largely driven by human activity (Napper and Thompson, 2020). Identifying the appropriate scope and scale of analyses and actions may prove challenging. MPP also represents a breadth of pollutants that have different patterns, processes, and social-ecological consequences as they degrade, making MPP less predictable than other pollutants (Eriksen et al., 2014; Luo et al., 2022).

Finally, more research is needed on integrating human dimensions (e.g., ecosystem services) into SE models (Barbier and Lee, 2014; Pittman et al., 2021). Still, LE and SE continuously adapt to better address applied research questions. Therefore, as SE is further applied to MPP research and management, many of these limitations could be addressed.

The plastic-scape includes all the human (i.e., governance systems and actors) and ecological components (i.e., abiotic, and biotic processes) of the system that contribute to patterns of plastic production, use, and pollution, as well as the interactions between MPP and human and natural communities that drive its social and ecological consequences. Failures to effectively mitigate MPP and its consequences are exacerbated by the complexity of this system and the ad hoc, reactive nature of many management efforts. SE provides a novel approach for researching the plastic-scape informing effective management.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material. Further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

EM: Conceptualization, led writing. BP: writing and editing. LG: writing and editing. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The publication of this article was funded by the Arizona State University Graduate and Professional Student Association's Publication Research Grant.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The publication of this article was funded by the Arizona State University Graduate and Professional Student Association's Publication Research Grant.

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