Environment-dependent Responses of Sulfur-linked Biogeochemical Cycling to Polyethylene Microplastics in Nearshore Sediments

These data originate from in situ incubation experiments in estuarine and beach sediments, aiming to characterize the impact of polyethylene microplastics (PE-MPs) on sediment sulfate reduction and related processes. In the experiment, we established two incubation sites (estuary and beach) with six replicates at each site, and the naming convention is as follows: “The prefixes 'B' and 'E' denote 'Beach' and 'Estuary', respectively; 'CK' represents the control group; 'LPE' and 'HPE' indicate low- and high-concentration PE-MPs treatments, respectively; the suffix number denotes the incubation depth.

For example, 'BHPE5' represents the high-concentration PE-MPs treatment in beach sediment at a depth of 5 cm.” Additionally, the meanings of the uploaded files are as follows: EDS.xlsx represents the surface elemental content of the PE-MPs; the FTIR series of files represent the FTIR measurement results of the PE-MP surface; SC gene.R is the linear fitting code for sulfate-reducing genes and carbon metabolism genes; SR gene.xlsx provides the relative abundances of functional genes related to sulfate reduction; environmental factor data.xlsx provides the environmental factor data for sediments at different depths; genes related...genes.xlsx provides the relative abundances of genes related to carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus metabolism; and methanogenes-related genes.xlsx provides the genes related to methanogenesis.