North Carolina Center for Coastal Algae, People, and Environment NC-CAPE

北卡罗来纳州海岸藻类、人类和环境中心(NC C-CAPE)是一项为期五年的努力，旨在提高我们对北卡罗来纳州沿海水域有害藻华(HAB)风险的科学知识，这些水域包括美国最大的泻湖河口-帕米利科-阿尔贝马尔湾系统。对该地区出现的赤潮的担忧激增，与水和海鲜中存在毒素的报道不谋而合。目前在导致这些水华的发展和毒素的产生以及相关的人类健康风险的环境驱动因素方面存在着重大的知识空白。随着对生态系统和人类健康的威胁越来越大，蓝藻大量繁殖的频率、强度和范围越来越大，可归因于富营养化并可能因气候变化而加剧，北卡罗来纳州-开普敦将提供数据，以指导实施有效监测方法的努力，为安全消费水和海产品提供指导值，提供预测工具以评估紧急和未来的毒素暴露风险，并利用社区参与倡议来填补数据空白，改善海洋和人类健康。北卡罗来纳州C-CAPE将在所有职业阶段为研究人员提供宝贵的合作、领导、交叉培训机会，并为跨学科扩展他们的研究项目提供基础支持。该中心的社区参与核心将使用数据公正的原则，这是理解和解决HAB暴露和预防的核心，使社区成员成为专家，有能力对他们自己的生活经历进行关键和系统的调查。该中心致力于招收来自不同背景的学生、博士后和工作人员，包括代表性不足的群体，并将召集一个反映利益攸关方多样性的外部咨询委员会。活动将包括与社区团体建立数据正义宪章，并设立社区咨询委员会，以确保利益攸关方参与问题定义、设计和数据传播。该中心由NSF海洋科学部和国家环境健康科学研究所(NIEHS)联合支持。NC C-CAPE结合了海洋和气候科学、毒理学、流行病学、建模和社区参与方面的多学科专业知识，以了解、预测和降低沿海水域蓝藻赤潮对人类健康的风险。该中心由三个研究项目组成，通过中心管理和社区参与核心联系在一起。北卡罗来纳州C-CAPE将阐明环境驱动因素与赤潮动力学、微囊藻毒素同系物组成和牡蛎和蓝蟹毒素污染之间的联系(项目1)，确定MC混合物如何影响监管相关哺乳动物模型以及高危人群中肝脏毒性和由此产生的不利健康后果风险的机制(项目2)，并在概率建模框架内整合不同的数据集和沿海环流模拟，以阐明对水和海产品中微囊藻毒素分布的环境控制，并评估气候变化中的暴露风险(项目3)。最后，该中心的社区参与核心将促进中心发现的翻译，在研究设计中使用数据正义的原则来提高社区的声音，填补与环境正义相关的HAB暴露和预防知识的空白，并支持由社区合作伙伴领导的批判性和系统性调查。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The North Carolina Center for Coastal Algae, People, and Environment (NC C-CAPE) is a five-year effort to advance our scientific knowledge on the risks of harmful algal blooms (HABs) in NC coastal waters, including the United States’ largest lagoonal estuary, the Pamlico-Albemarle Sound System. Concerns about emergent HABs in the region have surged and coincide with reports on toxins present in water and seafood. Major knowledge gaps currently exist on environmental drivers that lead to the development of these blooms and the production of toxins, and associated human health risks. With growing threats to ecosystem and human health, with the increasing frequency, intensity, and range of cyanobacterial blooms, attributable to eutrophication and likely exacerbated by climate change, NC-CAPE will provide data to guide efforts to implement effective monitoring approaches, inform guideline values for safe consumption of water and seafood, deliver predictive tools to assess emergent and future toxin exposure risk, and leverage community engagement initiatives to fill data gaps and improve oceans and human health. NC C-CAPE will provide investigators at all career stages valuable opportunities for collaboration, leadership, cross-training, as well as the foundational support to expand their research programs across disciplinary boundaries. The Center’s Community Engagement Core will use principles of data justice, which is central to understanding and addressing HAB exposure and prevention, to empower community members as experts with the capacity to conduct critical and systemic inquiry into their own lived experiences. The Center is committed to recruiting students, postdocs, and staff from diverse backgrounds including underrepresented groups, and will convene an External Advisory Committee that reflects the diversity of stakeholders. Activities will include the establishment of a data justice charter with community groups and the establishment of a Community Advisory Board to ensure stakeholder involvement in problem definition, design, and data dissemination. The Center is jointly supported by NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences and by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).NC C-CAPE combines multidisciplinary expertise in ocean and climate science, toxicology, epidemiology, modeling, and community engagement to understand, predict, and reduce risks to human health from cyanobacterial HABs in coastal waters. The Center comprises three research projects, bound together through the Center Administration and Community Engagement cores. NC C-CAPE will elucidate links among environmental drivers and HAB dynamics, microcystin congener composition, and toxin contamination in oysters and blue crabs (Project 1), define how MC mixtures influence mechanisms of liver toxicity and resulting risk of adverse health outcomes in regulatory-relevant mammalian models as well as at-risk human populations (Project 2), and integrate diverse data sets and coastal circulation modeling within a probabilistic modeling framework to elucidate environmental controls on microcystin distribution in water and seafood and assess exposure risk in a changing climate (Project 3). Finally, the Center’s Community Engagement Core will promote the translation of Center discoveries, use the principles of data justice to elevate community voices in research design, fill gaps in HAB exposure and prevention knowledge relevant to environmental justice, and support critical and systemic inquiry led by community partners.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.