River systems are a key environmental recipient of macroplastic pollution. Understanding the sources of macroplastic to rivers and the mechanisms controlling fate and transport is essential to identify and tailor measures that can effectively reduce global plastic pollution. Several guidelines exist for monitoring macroplastic in rivers; yet, no single method has emerged representing the standard approach. This reflects the substantial variability in river systems globally and the need to adapt methods to the local environmental context and monitoring goals. Here we present a critical review of methods used to measure macroplastic flows in rivers, with a specific focus on opportunities for methods testing, harmonisation, and quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC). Several studies have already revealed important findings; however, there is significant disparity in the reporting of methodologies and data. There is a need to converge methods, and their adaptations, towards greater comparability. This can be achieved through: i) methods testing to better understand what each method effectively measures and how it can be applied in different contexts; ii) incorporating QA/QC procedures during sampling and analysis; and iii) reporting methodological details and data in a more harmonised way to facilitate comparability and the utilisation of data by several end users, including policy makers. Setting this as a priority now will facilitate the collection of rigorous and comparable monitoring data to help frame solutions to limit plastic pollution, including the forthcoming global treaty on plastic pollution.

Microplastic research, initially focusing on marine environments, left freshwater ecosystems largely unexplored. Freshwaters are also vulnerable to microplastics and are likely the largest microplastic supplier to the ocean. However, microplastic sources, transport pathways, and fluxes at the catchment level remain to be quantified, compromising efficient actions toward mitigation and remediation. Here we show that 70–90% of microplastics reaching Norway’s largest lake, originating primarily from urban waste mismanagement and sludge application on crops, continue their journey toward the ocean without being buried. Indeed, our microplastic budget for the catchment shows that out of the 35.9 tons (7.4–119.4 t) of microplastics annually released into the lake, only 3.5 tons (1.3–8.8 t) are settling to the lake bottom. The spatial and vertical microplastic distribution and diversity in lake sediments, the socio-economic modeling of plastic fluxes and spatial information on land use and potential plastic sources all point toward urban and agricultural areas as emission hotspots of increasing importance. We conclude that the degree to which lake sediments represent a net microplastic sink is likely influenced by the nature of microplastics the lake receives, and ultimately on their origin.

Extensive regions in the permafrost zone are projected to become climatically unsuitable to sustain permafrost peatlands over the next century, suggesting transformations in these landscapes that can leave large amounts of permafrost carbon vulnerable to post‐thaw decomposition. We present 3 years of eddy covariance measurements of CH₄ and CO₂ fluxes from the degrading permafrost peatland Iškoras in Northern Norway, which we disaggregate into separate fluxes of palsa, pond, and fen areas using information provided by the dynamic flux footprint in a novel ensemble‐based Bayesian deep neural network framework. The 3‐year mean CO₂‐equivalent flux is estimated to be 106 gCO₂ m⁻² yr⁻¹ for palsas, 1,780 gCO₂ m⁻² yr⁻¹ for ponds, and −31 gCO₂ m⁻² yr⁻¹ for fens, indicating that possible palsa degradation to thermokarst ponds would strengthen the local greenhouse gas forcing by a factor of about 17, while transformation into fens would slightly reduce the current local greenhouse gas forcing.

We present long‐term changes in Norwegian lake water quality across regional gradients in atmospheric pollution, air temperature, hydrology, and vegetation using (a) a national representative lake survey carried out in 1995 and 2019 (ThousandLakes), and (b) an annual lake survey from acid‐sensitive catchments (78 lakes, TrendLakes) from 1990 to 2020. Our analysis encompasses all major chemical constituents, for example, anions and cations, dissolved organic matter (DOM), nutrients, iron (Fe), and silicate (SiO₂). During these decades, environmental changes included declines in sulfur (S) and nitrogen (N) deposition, climate warming, and increase in forest biomass. Strong chemical recovery from acidification is found, attributed to large reductions in atmospheric deposition, moderated by catchment processing from land use and climate change. Browning counteracted chemical recovery in some regions, while Ca increased unexpectedly. We suggest that increased weathering, from enhanced terrestrial productivity, is an important driver of increased Ca—substantiated by widespread, substantial increases in SiO₂. Light‐ and nutrient‐limitation has become more prevalent, indicated by higher DOM, lower nitrate (NO₃), and lower NO₃to total phosphorous ratios. Declines in lake NO₃ occurred independently of N deposition, suggesting increased catchment N retention, possibly from increased terrestrial productivity. We conclude that decreased air pollution continues to be a dominant driver of long‐term trends in lake chemistry, but climate‐induced increase in terrestrial weathering processes, governed by increased biomass, is likely to have an increasing impact on future lake acidity, nutrient, and light status, that may cascade along the aquatic continuum from rivers to the coast.

Declining oxygen concentrations in the deep waters of lakes worldwide pose a pressing environmental and societal challenge. Existing theory suggests that low deep‐water dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations could trigger a positive feedback through which anoxia (i.e., very low DO) during a given summer begets increasingly severe occurrences of anoxia in following summers. Specifically, anoxic conditions can promote nutrient release from sediments, thereby stimulating phytoplankton growth, and subsequent phytoplankton decomposition can fuel heterotrophic respiration, resulting in increased spatial extent and duration of anoxia. However, while the individual relationships in this feedback are well established, to our knowledge, there has not been a systematic analysis within or across lakes that simultaneously demonstrates all of the mechanisms necessary to produce a positive feedback that reinforces anoxia. Here, we compiled data from 656 widespread temperate lakes and reservoirs to analyze the proposed anoxia begets anoxia feedback. Lakes in the dataset span a broad range of surface area (1–126,909 ha), maximum depth (6–370 m), and morphometry, with a median time‐series duration of 30 years at each lake. Using linear mixed models, we found support for each of the positive feedback relationships between anoxia, phosphorus concentrations, chlorophyll a concentrations, and oxygen demand across the 656‐lake dataset. Likewise, we found further support for these relationships by analyzing time‐series data from individual lakes. Our results indicate that the strength of these feedback relationships may vary with lake‐specific characteristics: For example, we found that surface phosphorus concentrations were more positively associated with chlorophyll a in high‐phosphorus lakes, and oxygen demand had a stronger influence on the extent of anoxia in deep lakes. Taken together, these results support the existence of a positive feedback that could magnify the effects of climate change and other anthropogenic pressures driving the development of anoxia in lakes around the world.