Science of the Total Environment 762 (2021) 144110

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Science of the Total Environment

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scitotenv

Modelling the accumulation of microplastics through food webs with the

example Baiyangdian Lake, China
Yi-fei Ma, Xue-yi You ⁎
Tianjin Engineering Center of Urban River Eco-purification Technology, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Jinnan District, Tianjin 300350, China

H I G H L I G H T S G R A P H I C A L A B S T R A C T

• Accumulation of MPs in aquatic organ-

isms was different with trophic levels.
• MPs abundance in aquatic organism and
environment related to rainfall intensity
• MPs abundance in aquatic organisms
and environment with respect to time
was found.
• More delay of MPs accumulation be-
tween trophic levels for higher
trophic level

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Microplastic plastics (MPs) is an increasingly widely serious global environment problem, which severely threats
Received 24 October 2020 aquatic organisms and even human beings. However, the potential change trend of MPs abundance over time in
Received in revised form 20 November 2020 natural aquatic ecosystems and the cumulative effects through food webs are unclear. In this research, the model
Accepted 21 November 2020
of accumulation effect of MPs through aquatic food webs was established in the example Baiyangdian Lake
Available online 15 December 2020
(China) using the contaminant tracer module Ecotracer in the Ecopath modelling software. The results indicated
Editor: Damia Barcelo that the MPs spread and accumulate throughout the food-web fast, and finally to the high trophic level aquatic
organisms, Snakehead. The abundance of MPs in aquatic environment and organisms varies periodically with
Keywords: rainfall. The abundance of MPs in snakehead, mandarin fish, common carp, crucian carp, chub, fingerling, grass
Microplastics carp, mollusc, microzoobenthos, zooplankton increased about 3.97, 2.87, 2.35, 1.8, 1.48, 1.8, 1.86, 1.98, 1.99, 3.49
Baiyangdian Lake times of the initial abundance of MPs in them, respectively. Since snakehead exists in the highest trophic level
Ecotracer in Baiyangdian Lake ecosystem, the cumulative effect of MPs is the most serious through food web. Furthermore,
Food-web the accumulation of MPs in different trophic levels has a time delay effect, and the higher the nutrient level is, the
Aquatic organisms
more obvious the delay effect is. The results also showed that Ecotracer is a good model to explore the enrich-
ment effect of MPs in food web, the accumulation of MPs through food webs is serious, and the phenomenon
should arouse serious attention.
© 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Microplastics (MPs) are plastic particles with particle size smaller
than 5 mm (Kershaw and Rochman, 2016), it mainly come from
manufactured for industrial or domestic use, or as a result of large
items gradually broken down under biological, chemical and/or
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: xyyou@tju.edu.cn (X. You).
mechanical constraints (Cole et al., 2011). MPs have attracted world-
wide attention due to its universality and persistence in aquatic envi-
ronments (Andrady, 2011). Studies have shown that MPs can be easily
ingested by aquatic organisms due to they are similar in size to the lar-
vae of several organisms, including plankton (Besseling et al., 2014).
However, the effect of MPs on aquatic organisms are diverse (Wright
et al., 2013), not only limited to ingestion, but also transferred to tissues
(Von et al., 2012; Fleurine et al., 2020; Tu et al., 2018). Von et al. (2012)
firstly found that the transfer of MPs from the digestive tract to tissue in

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144110
0048-9697/© 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Y. Ma and X. You
invertebrate (M. edulis) under laboratory conditions. Tu et al. (2018)
found that the MPs can be ingested by zooplankton and further affect
its growth and reproduction. Fleurine et al. (2020) found the MPs in
non-edible (gills, digestive system) and edible (muscle) flesh of some
seafood samples under natural conditions, which demonstrate that
MPs can enter the tissues of aquatic organisms by ingestion or respira-
tion and stay for a long time. The MPs entering the organism will di-
rectly damage and block the digestive tract, resulting in the decrease
of feeding efficiency, energy shortage, growth retardation and other
problems. It will also aggravate the toxicity to organisms through the
adsorption of heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants (POPs),
and even lead to the death of individual organisms (Derraik, 2002;
Jabeen et al., 2017).
Furthermore, Rochman et al. (2015) evaluated the fish and shellfish
sold for human consumption in the world and found that more than half
of aquatic products contain human plastic products, which indicates
that MPs may eventually enter the human body through diet. The inter-
action between MPs and human body will produce allergy, cytotoxicity,
immune response or other acute reactions, and ultimately endanger
human health (Campanale et al., 2020). However, the research on trans-
fer and accumulation mechanism of MPs through food-web under nat-
ural environments is scarce.
In order to detect the transfer and accumulation mechanism of MPs
in aquatic organisms through food-web, the combination of ecotoxicol-
ogy and food-web modelling is important to address the impacts of pol-
lutants at the ecosystem level. Ecotracer is an effective model to
modelling the spread and accumulation of pollutants or toxins (Booth
and Zeller, 2005; Booth et al., 2020). However, it has not been applied
to the study of MPs spread and accumulation in aquatic system at pres-
ent. In this approach, the model of accumulation effect of MPs through
aquatic food webs was established in the example Baiyangdian Lake
(China) using the contaminant tracer module Ecotracer. From previous
studies, we know that runoff may be one of the important ways in
which terrestrial plastic particles are transferred to water (Su et al.,
2018) and rainfall is the most effective way to form surface runoff (Xia
Fig. 1. Location of Baiyangdian Wetland.
2
Science of the Total Environment 762 (2021) 144110
et al., 2020), therefore, rainfall was considered to calculate the base in-
flow rate of MPs in aquatic environment.
The aims of this study are: (1) Study the influence of rainfall on the
variation of base inflow rate on MPs abundance in aquatic environment;
(2) Detect the variation of MPs abundance inwater in natural environ-
ment; (3) Simulate the variation of MPs abundance in aquatic organ-
isms; (4) Find the mechanism of MPs transfer and accumulation
among different trophic levels; (5) Assess the enrichment degree of
MPs through food web; (6) Provide suggestions for people's dietary
choices and MPs control.
2. Area of study
Our study area is Baiyangdian lake (38°43′–39°02′N, 115°38′–116°–
07′E), which is located in the center of Hebei province with an area of
366 km2 (Fig. 1). It is 39.5 km from east to west and 28.5 km from
north to south. The average annual precipitation is 550 mm and the av-
erage annual evaporation is 1637 mm. Precipitation varies greatly from
year to year, and about 89.7% rainfalls are from May to October.
Baiyangdian Wetland is the biggest natural freshwater wetland and
important aquatic products base in North China Plain. It plays an impor-
tant role in maintaining local ecological balance. Due to the influence of
natural conditions and human activities, the runoff of rivers has de-
creased and a large number of waste water from urban domestic sew-
age, industrial and agricultural has been discharged in recent years.
Since there are many plastic products used in life, agricultural produc-
tion and industrial manufacturing, it has caused a serious plastic pollu-
tion in water.
3. Methods
3.1. Ecopath model
Ecopath is a modelling software of ecosystem that the assumption of
steady-state parameters to generate an energy flow network is applied
Y. Ma and X. You
by the standing stocks and trophic interactions of functional groups in
an ecosystem over a period of time. The balance of mass (energy, nutri-
ents) for any functional group (i) was obtained by setting its production
to be equal to the sum of consumption components and expressed as:
     
P n Q P
¼∑ Bj DC ij þ Ei þ Y i þ B ð1−EEi Þ ð1Þ
B i j¼1 B j B i i
where, the left side of the equation is expressed as the rate between the
production (Pi) and biomass (Bi). The terms of right-hand side are the
sum of the predation terms expressed as the product of the consump-
tion of biomass ratio (Q/Bj), the predator biomass (Bj) and the propor-
tion of the prey i in the diet of predator j (DCij). The net flow through
the boundaries of system is dispersal (Ei). The fishing exploitation is
represented by the catches (Yi). The accumulation or depletion of bio-
mass is BAi. The non-predation natural mortality is expressed by means
of ectotrophic efficiency (EEi).
The basic parameters to establish Ecopath model are Bi (P/B)i (Q/B)i,
EEi and DCji and only three above parameters are needed and the left
one can be calculated by the model. Normally, EEi is hard to get directly,
therefore we used the model to calculate it. When the resulting system
of equations was solved, it provided a snapshot of the flows within a tro-
phic web (Christensen and Pauly, 1993; http://www.ecopath.org). In
order to fulfill the condition of steady state, the model was balanced
by ensuring the values of EEi < 1 and 0.1 < P/Q < 0.35 of fish species
(Tuda and Wolff, 2018). If the model didn't satisfy mass balance, the
input parameter should be adjusted properly until the model reached
a steady state (Christensen et al., 2004).
3.2. Ecotracer model
Ecotracer as a pollutant module of Ecopath, uses the biomass flow
between functional groups and the environment to predict the concen-
tration of pollutants that are passively flowing with biomass of food
web. It is assumed that pollutants follow biomass passively and instan-
taneously. The MPs amount of a group depends on intake and loss. Up-
take comes from the direct uptake rate (i.e., respiration), losses arise
from natural decay processes, metabolic losses and emigration.
Ecotracer is based on a standard dynamic transfer model:
dC i ðt Þ
¼ α i −βi C i ðt Þ ð2Þ
dt
where, αi represents the gains from direct uptake from environment
plus the gains from diet, and βi represents the losses due to physical de-
cay and elimination rates, which are dependent upon the group's
concentrationCi.
Aj
α i ¼ μ i Bi C 0 þ AEi ∑ Q ji þ ci I i ð3Þ
j¼prey Bj
where, Co represents the environmental concentration (items/km2), Bi
is the biomass (t) of group i, μiis the direct absorption rate proportional-
ity co-efficient linking the direct uptake rate (items/km2/year) to the
parameters of biomass (t/km2) and environmental concentration
(items/km2), AEi is the assimilation efficiency and it is the fraction of
MPs within food items that is assimilated, Qji is the consumption rate
(items/year) of group j by group i,Ajis the amount (MPs) of the contam-
inant present in group j andBjis the biomass of prey group j(t), ci is the
group biomass concentration (items/t), and Ii is the immigrating bio-
mass (t/year).
 
Q ij
βi ¼ ∑ þ F i þ MOi þ Ei þ mi þ di ð4Þ
j¼pred Bi
where, Qij is the rate of consumption (items/year) of group i due to pre-
dation by j, Fi is the fishing mortality rate (/year),MOi(/year) is the other
3
Science of the Total Environment 762 (2021) 144110
mortality rate (i.e., non-predation mortality), Ei is the emigrating bio-
mass rate (/year), mi (/year) is the excretion and/or metabolic rate,
and di (/year) is the physical decay rate.
The abundance of MPs in the environment is also related to inflow
and loss. Inflow originates from the release of pollutants into the envi-
ronment as inflow rate, and from the excretion from organisms. Losses
originate from physical decay rates, base volume exchange and the di-
rect uptake by organisms from the environment.
The environmental compartment can be expressed as:
dC 0 ðt Þ
¼ α i −βi C 0 ðt Þ ð5Þ
dt
where, αi represents the gains in environment and βi represents the
losses to environment.
n
α i ¼ BI þ ∑ mi Ai ð6Þ
i
where, BI is the inflow rate (items/km2/year) to environment, and miAi
are the excretory products from all organisms within the environment.
n
βi C 0 ¼ ðdi þ V i ÞC 0 þ ∑ μ i Bi C 0 ð7Þ
i
where, di represents the decay rate (/year), and Vi represents the base
volume exchange loss (/year). Temporal changes through environmen-
tal concentration C0 can be made by applying a forcing function to in-
flow rate or through a contaminant concentration driver file.
3.3. Determination of model data
The food web of Baiyangdian lake was described through the
Ecopath with Ecosim food web model which consists 13 biological
groups and one detritus group. The food web model was shown basi-
cally to represent the whole Baiyangdian ecosystem (Yang and Chen,
2013). The biomass of 14 functional groups, P/B and Q/B value in the ini-
tial year 2009 were acquired from the reference of Yang et al. (2011).
The amount of fishing and fishing mortality which driving Ecosim mod-
ule was obtained through the economic statistical yearbook of Baoding
City. The diet composition in Ecopath (Table 1) was concluded from the
previous published papers (Cao and Shi, 1996; Cao et al., 2003; Han and
Li, 1995; Li, 1994; Liu et al., 2011; Li et al., 2014) and the data released in
the web (http://www.fishbase.org/).
In considering the MPs abundance in the lakes, the MPs concentra-
tions of water was found to be mainly determined by the variable of an-
nual rainfall, local GDP and industrial output of fiber and plastics and
these variables value can be found in Economic Statistical Yearbook.
Using these data, the relation of the MPs concentrations and annual
rainfall, local GDP and industrial output of fiber and plastics was
found. The data were shown in Table 2.
The relation of the MPs abundance in the lakes and the surrounding
human actives was determined by the measured data in Tai Lake, Chao
Lake, Dianshan Lake (Jiang et al., 2018; Su et al., 2018; Xiong et al., 2018;
Fraser et al., 2020). The relation was also verified by the measured data
of Poyang Lake, South Dongting Lake, Gaoyou Lake and it was found that
the relation can predict the MPs abundance in the lakes well. Therefore,
the initial MPs concentration of Baiyangdian Lake in 2009 was esti-
mated by the following relation (Ma and You, 2020a).
M ¼ 0:00823 x þ 0:52508 y þ 0:095 z ð8Þ
where, x is GDP; y is annual precipitation; z is industrial output of fiber
and plastics; M is the abundance of MPs in water.
Using Eq. (8), the initial abundance of MPs in Baiyangdian Lake in
2009 was estimated to be 306.14 items/L, which was changed into the
unit required by Ecotracer as 0.110412 × 1010 items/km2.
Y. Ma and X. You Science of the Total Environment 762 (2021) 144110

Table 1
Diet composition matrix for the functional groups in Ecopath module of Baiyangdian Lake.

Predator prey 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Snakehead
Mandarin fish 0.021
Common carp 0.119
Crucian carp 0.753
Chub 0.0538
Grass carp
Fingerling 0.0535
Mollucs 0.02 0.05 0.01
Microzoobenthos 0.3 0.0025 0.163
Zooplankton 0.317 0.253 0.141 0.0015 0.05 0.02 0.05
Submerged plant 0.371 0.68 0.239 0.986 0.996
Emergent plant 0.131
Phytoplankton 0.312 0.325 0.666 0.014 0.2 0.25
Detritus 0.183 0.787 0.78 0.7

Note: The number from 1 to 10 corresponds to the functional group in the left column from up to bottom.

Table 2
Statistics of annual precipitation, GDP and the industrial output of fiber and plastics and the measured MPs in the lakes.

Variable\lake Tai Lake Poyang Lake South Dongting Lake Chao Lake Gaoyou Lake Dianshan Lake

GDP (billion Chinese Yuan) 30,626 13,631 5169 7946 1604 27.8
Annual precipitation (mm) 1219 1874 1364 1661 941 1566
Industrial output of fiber and plastics (million Chinese Yuan) 14,292 1512 404 658 2188 814
MPs (item/m3) 2250 1100 967 1000 1711 900

The inflow rate of MPs in 2009 of Baiyangdian Lake was estimated by
using the fitting formula between the increase of abundance of MPs and
rainfall. The formular fitted by the experimental data of Xia et al. (2020)
was y = 3.379 ln(x) + 5.3516 and R2 = 0.703. Considering Baiyangdian
Lake is surround by many large cities, the actual inflow rate of MPs of
Baiyangdian Lake is similar to that of Lake Donghu, we used the formula
fitted by the experimental data of Xia et al. (2020) to estimate the in-
crease of MPs in Baiyangdian lake and the inflow rate of MPs of
Baiyangdian Lake was 26.5457 items/L in 2009, which converts to the
unit required by Ecotracer as 0.009574 × 1010 items/km2/year. Since
the inflow rate of MPs is related to rainfall, the monthly inflow of MPs
from 2009 to 2016 was set as a forcing function shown in Table 3. Be-
cause surface runoff is not formed in Baiyangdian Lake in cold winter,
no basic inflow rate of MPs from November to February of the next
year is considered. The rainfall data in 2009–2016 in Baiyangdian Lake
were obtained in Economic statistical yearbook.
For organisms, we assumed that the abundance of MPs in the same
kind of fish of two lakes is the same if the two lakes have similar key
food web and the abundance of MPs in water. Due to the lack of the
measured data in Baiyangdian Lake, we cited the measured abundance
of MPs in similar freshwater such as Tai Lake and Poyang Lake as the ini-
tial MPs concentration in organisms (Jabeen et al., 2017; Jiang et al.,
2020; Sun et al., 2018; Li et al. (2020a); Li et al. (2020b); Zhou et al.
(2020)). The direct absorption rate was set according to the measured
data in gills (Lars-Henrik et al., 2016) in above researches (Tu et al.,
2018; Li et al. (2020a); Li et al. (2020b); Jiang et al., 2020). Decay rate
of organisms refers to the proportion of MPs in intestinal tract to total
MPs in organism and it was set according to Tu et al. (2018), Huang
et al. (2020), Koongolla et al. (2020). The proportion of contaminant ex-
creted is the number of MPs that does not enter tissues after ingestion, it
was set according to Fleurine et al. (2020), Li et al. (2020a, 2020b). The
input parameters of Ecotracer were shown in Table 4. The model runs
forward in time with using Ecosim components to estimate potential
concentrations of functional groups and species for lacking such data
under environmental steady-state conditions.
4. Results
4.1. Ecopath model
Food web is also called food chain web or food cycle. Ecopath model
is a common method to study the function and structure of food web.
When using the Ecopath model, it should be assured of balance of
each organism at first. The output parameters of Ecopath in 2009 were
listed in Table 5. It was found that the values of Ecotrophic efficiency
(EEi) < 1 and (Production/Consumption) P/Q are in the range of
0.1–0.35 of fish groups which indicates that the model is in a balanced
state.
The structure and trophic levels (TLs) of key food web of
Baiyangdian Lake ecosystem were shown in Fig. 2 and Table 6,

Table 3
Monthly inflow of MPs in Baiyangdian lake in 2009–2016. Unit:items/l.

Year 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Month

3 18.3 18.66 0 13.1 8.31 9.06 6.72 0

4 20.98 20.05 16.64 18.77 15.23 17.88 18.17 14.43
5 19.48 18.89 18.08 14.32 17.17 18.96 22.39 18.75
6 22.02 17.15 22.38 22.53 23.99 21.87 17.65 23.76
7 24.68 22.28 26.48 25.74 25.04 20.5 24.1 27.03
8 25.35 24.81 23.14 23.6 22.55 22.21 24.57 24
9 22.19 23.33 20.03 22.36 21.09 21.89 21.81 20.67
10 15.21 15.45 14.83 13.86 14.29 14.53 15.17 15.89

4
Y. Ma and X. You Science of the Total Environment 762 (2021) 144110

Table 4
Input parameters of starting values of Ecotracer baseline simulation in Baiyangdian Lake.

Group Initial conc. Conc. in immigrating biomass Direct absorption rate Decay rate Prop. of containment excreted
(items/t × 1010) (items/t) (items/t/year) (items/year) [0–1]

Snake head 0.0008 0 0.1098 0.0346 0.675

Mandarin fish 0.00003 0 0.0366 0.0067 0.686
Common Carp 0.00003 0 0.0366 0.256 0.686
Crucian Carp 0.0001 0 0.0732 0.8 0.686
Chub 0.0021 0 0.0732 0.128 0.686
Grass Carp 0.0005 0 0.11 0.0128 0.686
Fingerling 0.0006 0 0.0542 0.128 0.686
Mollucs 0.0002 0 0.0289 0.0116 0.618
Microzoobenthos 0.0002 0 0.00449 0.0116 0.618
Zooplankton 0.00000008 0 0.00449 0.0116 1
Submergent Plant 0 0 0 0 1
Emergent Plant 0 0 0 0 1
Phytoplankton 0 0 0 0 1
Detritus 0.00006 0 0 0 1

Table 5
The output parameters of Ecopath in 2009.

Group Biomass in habitat area (t/km2) Production/biomass (/year) Consumption/Biomass (/year) Ecotrophic efficiency Production/consumption

Snake head 3.84 1.3 7 0.175 0.186

Mandarin fish 0.5 1.4 7.2 0.994 0.194
Common Carp 19.2 1.9 8.8 0.211 0.216
Crucian Carp 134.41 2.1 7.4 0.184 0.284
Chub 9.6 2.3 8.5 0.168 0.271
Grass Carp 9.6 2.5 9 0.094 0.278
Fingerling 7.68 2.15 8.1 0.198 0.265
Mollucs 22 3 12.876 0.913 0.233
Microzoobenthos 7 20 62.5 0.707 0.32
Zooplankton 3.9 113 389.655 0.824 0.290
Submergent Plant 2600 1.25 0.154
Emergent Plant 1200 1 0.109
Phytoplankton 37.11 85.891 0.264
Detritus 70 0.250

Fig. 2. Trophic relationships of functional groups of Baiyangdian Lake ecosystem in 2009 (The number under the name of the species represents the biomass of groups. The black curve
represents the predation relationship and the number in the left represent the trophic levels of groups).

5
Y. Ma and X. You Science of the Total Environment 762 (2021) 144110

Table 6 inflow rate, which brings MPs from land to water and MPs settled into
Nutrition level and food chain quantity of each functional groups in the sediment fast (Ma and You, 2020b).
Baiyangdian Lake.

Group name Number of paths Trophic level 4.2.2. The variation of MPs abundance in aquatic organisms
Snakehead 52 3.302 Fig. 4 showed the variation of MPs abundance with respect to time in
Mandarin fish 10 2.347 aquatic organisms. It showed that the abundance of MPs in aquatic or-
Common Carp 12 2.331 ganisms appeared periodicity variation, which similar to the abundance
Crucian Carp 12 2.327
of MPs in water environment. What's more, it showed that all abun-
Chub 11 2.161
Grass Carp 2 2 dance of MPs in aquatic organisms was increased at the end of simula-
Fingerling 7 2.004 tion. However, there were different degrees of increase. The
Mollucs 7 2.219 accumulation of MPs in aquatic organisms at the top of the trophic
Microzoobenthos 4 2.021 level or that on the bottom layer which mainly feeds detritus was the
Zooplankton 2 2.053
Total 119 2.286
highest.
Fig. 5 showed that the abundance of MPs in aquatic organisms before
and after the simulation (2009–2016). It was found that the abundance
respectively. Four trophic levels were considered in Baiyangdian Lake of MPs in snakehead, mandarin fish, common carp, crucian carp, chub, fin-
ecosystem. The TL of major economic fishes was 2.161–2.347 with an gerling, grass carp, mollusc, microzoobenthos, zooplankton increased
average of 2.286. The functional group at the top of TL was snakehead about 3.97, 2.87, 2.35, 1.8, 1.48, 1.8, 1.86, 1.98, 1.99, 3.49 times as
whose nutrition reached 3.302. Among the consumers, grass carp was much as the initial abundance of MPs in them, respectively. Since
at the bottom of TL. This is because grass carp directly feeds on sub- snakehead exists in the highest trophic level in Baiyangdian Lake ecosys-
merged plants and phytoplankton. tem, the cumulative effect of MPs is the most serious through food web.
From Fig. 2, it was seen that there were two kinds of energy flow in The accumulation effect in zooplankton was also high, it was due to zoo-
Baiyangdian Lake ecosystem. The first was the predatory food chain, and plankton feed on detritus and phytoplankton, which the MPs are rich.
the second was the detritus food chain. There were 119 food chains in MPs with large diameter settled down into sediment (detritus) fast
Baiyangdian Lake ecosystem. Among them, snakehead had the largest (Ma and You, 2020b). Most MPs with small particle size distributed
number of 52 food chains. The lowest number of food chain was the near water surface and attached to the surface of phytoplankton, which
groups of zooplankton and grass carp, both of which were 2 food chains leads to the accumulation of MPs in zooplankton due to predation.
because zooplankton feeds on detritus and phytoplankton and grass carp Fig. 6 showed the variation of MPs abundance in aquatic organisms
only feed on submerged plants and phytoplankton. in four seasons (take 2015 as an example). It was found that the MPs
in aquatic organisms in spring was the lowest since there was less rain-
fall in Baiyangdian area and the abundance of MPs flowing from land to
4.2. Ecotracer model water was low. In addition, most of the MPs accumulated in aquatic or-
ganisms in the summer and autumn of last year were reduced after the
4.2.1. The variation of MPs abundance winter. With the increase of rainfall in summer, the MPs abundance
The variation of MPs abundance with respect to time in water envi- flowing from land to Baiyangdian Lake was increased, which further
ronment was shown in Fig. 3. It was found that the MPs abundance in lead to the increase of MPs abundance in aquatic organisms. The MPs
water appeared periodicity variation with the rainfall in seasons and abundance in aquatic organisms in autumn was steady or slightly grow-
the MPs abundance in water reached the peak value in rainy season ing. On the one hand, the rainfall in autumn still brings the MPs from the
(about July). At the end of the simulation, the MPs abundance in land into the water body and increases the abundance of the MPs in the
water decreased compared to the initial value. It may due to some aquatic organisms. On the other hand, the MPs accumulated in aquatic
part of MPs settled into the sediment, and the others were digested organisms cannot be discharged off their bodies quickly. The MPs abun-
and absorbed by aquatic organisms although rainfall brings MPs from dance in aquatic organisms in winter was accordance to that in autumn
land to water. The variation of MPs abundance in detritus indicated or slightly declined. This is because it snows in winter and there is little
that the MPs abundance in detritus increased at the end of simulation, MPs flowing from land to water and the MPs abundance in water is de-
and the abundance of MPs in detritus varies periodically with the annual creased. The MPs in aquatic organisms mainly accumulates in summer

(a) In water (b) Detritus

Fig. 3. The variation of MPs abundance with respect to time in water environment.

6
Y. Ma and X. You
and autumn and it can't discharge into water quickly as soon as it enters
the winter.
4.2.3. Time delay of MPs accumulation at different trophic levels
In order to detect the delay effect of MPs accumulation in different
trophic levels, we divided the organism groups in Baiyangdian Lake
into four trophic levels according to the principle of Lindeman (1942)
as: first trophic level (detritus), second trophic level (grass carp), third
trophic level (mandarin fish, common carp, crucian carp, chub, fingerling,
mollusc, microzoobenthos, zooplankton) and fourth trophic level
(snakehead). Fig. 7 showed the delay effect of MPs accumulation in dif-
ferent trophic levels in two periods: beginning simulation period and
final simulation period. It was found from Fig. 7(a) that the time of the
MPs abundance in first, second, third, fourth trophic level reached
peak value of body MPs abundance was in Sept. 2009, Aug., 2009,
Sept. 2009 and Jan, 2010, respectively. The time of the second trophic
level (grass carp) reached the peak value earlier than that of the first tro-
phic level (detritus) because the second trophic level organisms major
feed by submerged plant (exist in bottom of water) and phytoplankton
(exist in surface water). Many MPs in water were majorly distributed
in surface water (small particle size) and on the bottom of water
(large particle size). Phytoplankton attaches to MPs on the surface and
it has high MPs abundance. Therefore, the MPs abundance in the second
trophic level (grass carp) reached the peak value earlier than that of the
first trophic level (detritus). The MPs abundance in the third and fourth
trophic level showed an obvious time delay of MPs abundance. The time
delay of MPs abundance from the second trophic level to the third tro-
phic level and that from the third trophic level to the fourth trophic
level are about 17 days and 43 days, respectively.
For the final simulation period, the response of aquatic ecosystem to
the abundance of MPs in water has entered a relatively stable period
after six years development (from 2009 to 2015). Fig. 7(b) showed
that the unobvious time delay difference of MPs abundance of the sec-
ond trophic level from that that of the third trophic level. This may be
due to the third trophic level feeds on many groups (detritus and
plants) rather than only feed on the second trophic level (grass carp)
and this reduces the time delay effect of MPs abundance of the third tro-
phic level. The delay time difference of MPs abundance of the third tro-
phic level from that of the fourth trophic level was also found in the final
simulation period, which was about 17 days.
5. Discussions
Many studies have found that rainfall and human activities have a
great impact on the abundance of MPs in water (Feng et al., 2020; Liu
et al., 2020; Xia et al., 2020). Feng et al. (2020) considered two kinds
of variables of human activities (night light index and industry output
values) which influence the abundance of MPs in water to generate
the relationship between human activities and MPs abundance in
water. However, there still has a problem since night light index can
only present the number of families, but it cannot really reflect the num-
ber of people in a family. Furthermore, families have different lighting
times and night light index hardly reflects all families. For these reasons,
the night light index is not a good variable to present the influence of
human on abundance of MPs. Furthermore, the empirical formula of
Feng et al. (2020) has an obvious error that with the increase of industry
output value, the MPs in water is decreased. In our opinion, the abun-
dance of MPs in water should be increased with the increase of industry
output or population. Therefore, the coefficients of empirical formula
should be all positive number.
For the approach of Xia et al. (2020), they didn't consider the impor-
tant variable rainfall which was proved to be the important variable de-
termining the process of MPs from land to water. In this research, the
results combined human activities (local GDP and industrial output of
fiber and plastics) with annual rainfall to generate the empirical formula
to estimate the MPs abundance in water was adopted (Ma and You,
7
Science of the Total Environment 762 (2021) 144110
2020b). This means that the accuracy of formula adopted was high
and the estimation of the MPs abundance in Baiyangdian Lake is more
reliable.
Xia et al. (2020) found that the abundance of MPs in Lake Donghu of
China increased significantly by analyzing the measured data after rain-
fall. The relationship between rainfall and the increase of MPs in water
body was fitted. The fitting formula with R2 = 0.942 is very reliable,
which proves that there is a strong positive correlation between the in-
crease of MPs in water and rainfall. However, the relationship between
rainfall and the increase of MPs abundance in water shouldn't be appear
in a linear relationship since there is an upper limitation of the abun-
dance of MPs on land surface. Therefore, we refitted the empirical for-
mula into logarithmic function, which is more consistent with the
actual situation. The empirical formula was suggested to estimate the
MPs abundance of water in densely populated area. Graham et al.
(2020) also measured MPs abundance in water and rainfall in Taiwan.
However, the research didn't generate an empirical formula of the rela-
tionship between the increase of MPs in water and rainfall. According to
the analyzing method proposed in Xia et al. (2020), we generated the
empirical formula which is suitable to estimate the MPs abundance of
water in sparsely populated area.
From the results of Ecopath, it was found that Baiyangdian Lake eco-
system was dominated by major economic fish common carp, crucian
carp, chub and grass carp which contributed the majority of biomass of
19.2, 134.4, 9.6 and 9.6 t/km2, respectively. The feature of food web
structure includes distinctive trophic flow pattern and the correspond-
ing ecological transfer efficiency (TE) between trophic level (TL). The
average TE of the aggregated food chain was estimated at 10.5% which
was similar to 10.85% of the immature ecosystem of Sanggou Bay (Sun
et al., 2020).
For the ecosystem properties in Table 7, the value of TPP/TR was
2.903, it indicated that the ecosystem of Baiyangdian Lake was a devel-
oping ecosystem and the functional groups had more production than
respiration. Compared with the results of Tai Lake (Li et al., 2014) and
Chao Lake (Liu et al., 2014), Baiyangdian Lake showed a much lower
TPP/TR value of 4.215. This may indicated that Baiyangdian Lake ecosys-
tem has less aquatic products, and of which most are in the ecosystem
recycle while a small part is caught. CI is the ratio between the number
of trophic relationships and the total number of possible trophic rela-
tionships in the system. In Baiyangdian Lake ecosystem, the value of
CI = 0.201 was much smaller than 1 (maturity) and this may due to
the lack interactions of predators and species reduced by human inter-
vention. The SOI quantifies the distribution of feeding interactions
among trophic levels of food web through the weighted average of om-
nivore of consumers. In Baiyangdian Lake, SOI was 0.111, which is rela-
tively higher compared to the Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture
ecosystems in the range of 0.041–0.092 (Li et al., 2014; Liu et al.,
2014; Sun et al., 2020).
The differences between these ecosystems and our model results
might be explained by food web by that relatively natural environment
are usually more complex. It also showed that human interference is
high in Tai Lake, Chao Lake and Sanggou Bay compared to Baiyangdian
Lake. Since the maturity and stability of Baiyangdian Lake is low and it
is more susceptible to human activities, it is important and meaningful
to detect the effect mechanism of pollutants, such as MPs on the ecosys-
tem of Baiyangdian Lake.
Previous studies have found that MPs widely exist in aquatic organ-
isms (Von et al., 2012; Fleurine et al., 2020; Tu et al., 2018). However,
the research on trophic transfer mainly focuses on the isolation effect
of MPs in labs, and the description of real-world scenarios is not accu-
rate enough (Santana et al., 2017; Carbery et al., 2018). How the abun-
dance of MPs in aquatic organisms with respect to time and the
mechanism of accumulation through food webs under natural condition
is still not clear.
In our research, we selected Baiyangdian Lake as research area and
analyzed the abundance of MPs in aquatic organisms with respect to
Y. Ma and X. You
time and the mechanism of accumulation through food webs. It was
found that the MPs abundance in environment and aquatic organisms
is in a periodic change corresponding to rainfall intensity and reaches
a peak in the summer of each year. At the end of 8-year simulation pe-
riod, the accumulation degree of MPs in different aquatic organisms was
different and it was about 1.48–3.97 times of their initial abundance.
The highest trophic level snakehead had the highest accumulation de-
gree of MPs, which reached 3.97 times of the initial abundance. Since
(a) Snakehead
(c) Common carp
(e) Chub
Fig. 4. The variation of MPs abundance (×1010 items) with respect to time in aquatic organisms.
8
Science of the Total Environment 762 (2021) 144110
human exist in the highest trophic level in nature, the abundance of
MPs accumulated in human body through food web will be very high,
and a large number of MPs will harm human health. This inference is
consistent with the viewpoint of Wang et al. (2019). Therefore, we
should pay more attention to the effects of MPs on human and aquatic
organisms.
Our research demonstrated that the Ecotracer is a capable tool for
tracing MPs through all functional groups of ecosystem, which requiring
(b) Mandarin fish
(d) Crucian carp
(f) Fingerling
Y. Ma and X. You
(g) Grass carp
(i) Zooplankton
Fig. 4 (continued).
relatively few toxicologic input parameters to follow food web flow of
contaminant through all levels of ecosystem. Significantly, our approach
also lends itself to the investigation of other contaminants with signifi-
cant impacts on global ecosystems and human health. We suggested
that further research of applying Ecotracer to study the change of MPs
in aquatic ecosystems is urgently required. It can be applied to predict
the abundance and toxicity of MPs in the ecosystem through food
webs. In addition, human beings can be added to ecosystem compo-
nents to analyze the impact of MPs on human beings through
food webs.
In addition to the negative effects, Taipale et al. (2019) demon-
strated that aquatic micro-organisms can produce, biochemically up-
grade, and trophically transfer nutritionally important biomolecules
from PE-MPs. This provides a direction for us to re-understand the influ-
ence of MPs.
The limitations and the implications for future research should be
outlined. Due to the limitation of data, some parameters were citied
from other similar research areas which have similar food web structure
(Lars-Henrik et al., 2016; Jabeen et al., 2017; Jiang et al., 2020; Sun et al.,
2018; Tu et al., 2018; Li et al. (2020a, 2020b); Zhou et al., 2020). In the
follow-up study, the measured data of the study area should be ob-
tained through experiments to further verify the reliability of the model.
9
Science of the Total Environment 762 (2021) 144110
(h) Mollusc
(j) Microzoobenthos
The research area selected is an inland water, and the immigration of
aquatic organisms was not considered. If the study area is a sea, the im-
migration of aquatic organisms should be considered.
Hydrodynamic factors such as velocity and flow direction may have
a great impact on the enrichment of MPs in food web. However, Ecopath
model is a mass balance model, which can't take into account the hydro-
dynamic effect. How to consider the effects of hydrodynamic factors on
the enrichment of MPs in food web should be studied in the future.
What's more, eutrophication is a kind of water pollution caused by
excessive content of nitrogen, phosphorus and other plant nutrients. It
often appears in lakes, reservoirs, estuaries, bays and other slow flowing
waters. Eutrophication should be also combined with MPs pollution to
study the effects of both on food web and aquatic organisms.
6. Conclusions
The present study is perhaps the first one that seek to detect the var-
iation of MPs abundance with respect to time in aquatic organisms and
environment under nature condition. By analyzing the measured MPs
abundance and rainfall data, we generated an empirical formular to es-
timate the MPs inflow in water. Combined with the abundance of MPs
in aquatic organisms and other parameters obtained by the measured
Y. Ma and X. You Science of the Total Environment 762 (2021) 144110

Fig. 5. The abundance of MPs (×1010 items) in aquatic organisms before (2009) and after the simulation (2016).

data in other research areas with similar ecosystem structure, the vari-
ation of MPs abundance in aquatic organisms and environment under
nature condition was studied by Ecopath and Ecotracer models.
Based on results of Ecopath in 2009, it was concluded that the TL of
major economic fishes is 2.161–2.347 with an average TL of 2.286.
Transfer efficiency in Baiyangdian Lake ecosystem was 10.5%. The sum
of all production was 8671.14 tkm−2a−1 and the total system
throughput was 17,905.961 tkm−2a−1. It showed that Baiyangdian
Lake was in immature stage in 2009, which may more vulnerable to
human activities (MPs pollution).
For the ecosystem properties in Baiyangdian Lake, the value of TPP/
TR, CI and SOI was 2.903, 0.201 and 0.111, respectively. The values of FCI
and FMPL were 2.926% and 4.727%, respectively. All the above indicators
showed that the ecosystem of Baiyangdian Lake was a developing

Fig. 6. The variation of MPs abundance (×1010 items) in aquatic organisms in four seasons of 2015.

10
Y. Ma and X. You
(a) Initial simulation period
Fig. 7. The delay effect of MPs accumulation in different trophic levels in two periods.
ecosystem and the minimization disturbance of human was suggested
to protect the ecosystem.
From the results of Ecotracer, it was found that the MPs abundance
in environment and aquatic organisms showed a periodic change with
rainfall intensity and reached a peak in the summer of each year. The ac-
cumulation degree of MPs in aquatic organisms was different, which
was about 1.48–3.97 times of the initial abundance. The highest trophic
level snakehead had the highest accumulation degree of MPs, which was
3.97 times of the initial abundance. In terms of seasons, there are rela-
tively low MPs in aquatic organisms in spring, so it is better for people
to choose more aquatic products in spring. Human is in the highest tro-
phic level in nature, the abundance of MPs accumulates in human body
through food web is high, and a large number of MPs harm human
health. Therefore, we should pay more attention to MPs accumulation
in human body and ecosystems.
Our research also found the time delay effect of MPs abundance at
different trophic levels. In general, the higher the nutrient level is, the
more obvious the delay effect of MPs accumulation between trophic
levels is.
This study provided a reference of further research on the cumula-
tive effects of MPs through food webs in ecosystems. MPs will continue
Table 7
Ecosystem properties of Baiyangdian Lake ecosystem.
Parameter
2
Sum of all consumption (t/km /year)
Sum of all exports (t/km2/year)
Sum of all respiratory flows (t/km2/year)
Sum of all flows into detritus (t/km2/year)
Total system throughput (t/km2/year)
Sum of all production (t/km2/year)
Mean trophic level of the catch
Gross efficiency
Calculated total net primary production (t/km2/year)
Total primary production/total respiration
Net system production (t/km2/year)
Total primary production/total biomass
Total biomass/total throughput (/year)
Total biomass (excluding detritus) (t/km2)
Total catch (t/km2/year)
Connectance Index (CI)
System Omnivory Index (SOI)
Shannon diversity index
Finn's cycling index (FCI) (%)
Finn's mean path length (FMPL)
Science of the Total Environment 762 (2021) 144110
(b) Final simulation period
to be of global concern as long as there are ongoing anthropogenic in-
puts of MPs. The present ecosystem-scale simulation demonstrates the
enrichment effect of MPs through food web is obvious. Since human-
beings is the highest nutritional level in nature, we can expect that
MPs largely accumulate in human body and eventually affect people's
health. Further research should be focused on the accumulation and
toxicity of MPs enriched through food webs.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Yi-fei Ma: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Writing –
original draft, Data curation, Writing – review & editing. Xue-yi You:
Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ-
ence the work reported in this paper.
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