Industrial arsenic contamination causes catastrophic changes in freshwater ecosystems.
Industrial arsenic contamination causes catastrophic changes in freshwater ecosystems.
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工业砷污染导致淡水生态系统发生灾难性变化
DOI：
10.1038/srep17419
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发表时间：
2015-11-30
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Smol JP
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Chen G;Shi H;Tao J;Chen L;Liu Y;Lei G;Liu X;Smol JP
重金属污染目前已被广泛认识到对健康和环境构成严重威胁，然而，关于重金属污染对生态系统健康的不利影响，目前所知的大部分是来自短期生态毒理学研究。由于经常缺乏长期监测数据，人们对砷等污染物的长期生态后果知之甚少。在这里，我们对中国两个受污染湖泊的沉积物进行了年代记录，忠实地记录了与1950年之前的背景水平相比，总砷含量增加了13.9倍和21.4倍。与此同时，关键生物群的一致反应表明生态系统发生了明显的变化，甲壳类浮游动物（这些湖泊系统食物网中的重要食草动物）的数量减少了10倍，而一种高度耐金属的藻类的数量增加了5倍。这种根本性的生态变化将在整个生态系统中发生连锁反应，对受污染地区的生态系统服务造成潜在的灾难性后果。
Heavy metal pollution is now widely recognized to pose severe health and environmental threats, yet much of what is known concerning its adverse impacts on ecosystem health is derived from short-term ecotoxicological studies. Due to the frequent absence of long-term monitoring data, little is known of the long-tem ecological consequences of pollutants such as arsenic. Here, our dated sediment records from two contaminated lakes in China faithfully document a 13.9 and 21.4-fold increase of total arsenic relative to pre-1950 background levels. Concurrently, coherent responses in keystone biota signal pronounced ecosystem changes, with a >10-fold loss in crustacean zooplankton (important herbivores in the food webs of these lake systems) and a >5-fold increase in a highly metal-tolerant alga. Such fundamental ecological changes will cascade through the ecosystem, causing potentially catastrophic consequences for ecosystem services in contaminated regions.