COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Opening Pandora's Box with a Biotic Key: Can Cyanobacterial Blooms in Nutrient-Poor Lakes Accelerate Eutrophication?

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。淡水生态系统提供了对人类福祉至关重要的生态服务，如饮用水，食物资源和废水处理。如果人类活动及其影响超出了系统吸收或缓冲的能力，这些系统很容易受到这些服务中断的影响。人们早就知道，淡水系统的营养负荷过多会导致水质下降和有害藻类大量繁殖。生物制剂的作用尚未得到理解。初步结果表明，他们可以加速这种转变，从营养贫乏的湖泊富营养化的湖泊，促进沉积物中积累的营养物质的释放。该奖项将探讨刺粘毛藻在加速富营养化中的作用。本研究将探讨G.棘藻类影响氮和磷的有效性以及整个湖泊的代谢。通过实地观察，实验室和实地实验，古生态学，建模和比较研究，PI将阐明Gloeotrichia水华作为富营养化驱动因素的作用。鉴于G.将棘孢植物注入东北部的湖泊该项目确定了一些活动（学生培训、湖泊管理协会），这些活动将扩大研究的影响。项目执行人积极参与国际湖泊网络、全球湖泊生态网络，从而确保在全球范围内迅速传播成果。

AbstractThis award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Freshwater ecosystems provide vital ecological services important to human well being such as drinking water, food resources, and waste water treatment. These systems are vulnerable to disruption of these services if human activities and their impacts exceed the capacity of the system to absorb or buffer them. It has been long known that excessive nutrient loads to freshwater systems can result in a reduction in water quality and blooms in nuisance algae. What has not been understood is the role of biological agents. Initial results indicate that they can accelerate this shift from a nutrient poor lake to a eutrophic lake by facilitating the release of accumulated nutrients from the sediments. This award will explore the role that Gloeotrichia echinulata plays in accelerating eutrophication. The research will explore how G. echinulata affects both nitrogen and phosphorus availability as well as whole lake metabolism. Through field observations, laboratory and field experiments, paleoecology, modeling and comparative studies, the PIs will elucidate the role of Gloeotrichia blooms as a driver of eutrophication. The research is timely and will have immediate resource management application, given the recent expansion of G. echinulata into lakes across the Northeast. The project identified a number of activities (student training, lake management associations) which will lead to broadened impacts of the research. The PIs are active participants in the international lakes network, Global Lakes Ecological Network, thus ensuring the results will be rapidly disseminated on a global scale.