Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health

五大湖淡水和人类健康中心

• 批准号: 2418066
• 负责人: Gregory Dick
• 金额: $ 385.65万
• 依托单位: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-04-15 至 2029-03-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2418066&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Great; Lakes; Center; Fresh; Waters

The Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health is a consortium of over 10 universities and agencies working in the Great Lakes region and directed by the University of Michigan and University of Toledo. The Center is a five year effort to further our understanding of the critical risk that climate change, and resulting cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (cHABs), pose to freshwater ecosystems and human health. Increased precipitation, more powerful storm events, and warming waters all encourage the proliferation of cHABs, which now occur in all five Great Lakes. The Center is organized around several overarching themes. The first is to resolve how climate change influences the occurrence of cHABs and the transport of the toxins they produce. The second is to understand toxin production and how toxins impact health, through both airborne and waterborne exposure. The third is to develop new technologies for enhanced monitoring and forecasting. In collaboration with agency and community partners the team will integrate findings into state-of-the-art forecasts and other data products that reach a wide stakeholder audience. A Community Engagement Core (CEC) will connect Center science to relevant communities, promoting co-design of research and communication of research outcomes to stakeholders. The team will leverage the Center’s research enterprise to recruit and train a diverse next generation of scientists in the field of oceans and human health, including support for graduate students and postdocs. The Center will advance inclusivity in all facets of research and engagement. Together, these research, engagement, and training activities will advance progress toward the stated goals of understanding and translating climate change effects on cHAB events and their threats to human health in the Great Lakes region. The Center is jointly supported by NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences and by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).The Center’s research is organized around four distinct but highly integrated projects. Project 1 seeks to determine how a changing climate influences the proliferation and toxin production of cHAB taxa. This project will use a multipronged field-lab experimental approach to test the hypothesis that climate-driven episodic events (e.g., storms) affect several classes of cyanotoxins (microcystins, anatoxins, saxitoxins, and anabaenopeptins), taste and odor compounds, and phycosphere interactions. Project 2 seeks to reveal the diversity, spatial and temporal distribution, and bioactivity of known and undiscovered toxins and other secondary metabolites. This project will use a combination of approaches (including metagenomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics) to characterize the diversity of emerging toxins and bioactive compounds currently invisible to methods used in routine water quality analysis. Project 3 will study toxin release from cHAB cells, aerosolization, and transport to test the hypothesis that climate change will increase human exposure to cHAB toxins through ingestion and inhalation. A combined measurement and modeling approach will be used to evaluate the impact of climate-change driven stressors on the distribution of dissolved and particulate toxins in both water bodies and aerosols generated from cHABs, enabling predictions of toxin exposure under a changing climate. Project 4 will assess the effects of aerosolized toxins on human health with a special focus on populations that are vulnerable due to pre-existing conditions, such as asthma. Project 4 will test the overall hypothesis that exposure to aerosolized cyanotoxins induces significant inflammation in the airway epithelium and that individuals with asthma are particularly susceptible to cHAB aerosols. Combined with the results of the other three projects, this work will enable assessment of human health risks of cHAB toxins under current conditions and future climate scenarios. In summary, the Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health aims to understand and communicate the risks of cHABs in the face of climate change through collaborative research, engagement efforts, and training initiatives.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.

五大湖淡水与人类健康中心是由密歇根大学和托莱多大学领导的在大湖区工作的10多所大学和机构组成的联盟。该中心是一项为期五年的努力，旨在加深我们对气候变化以及由此产生的蓝藻有害藻华(CHAB)对淡水生态系统和人类健康构成的严重风险的理解。降雨量的增加、更强的风暴事件和变暖的海水都鼓励了cHAB的扩散，现在所有五个五大湖都出现了cHAB。该中心围绕几个主要主题进行组织。第一个是解决气候变化如何影响cHAB的发生及其产生的毒素的运输。第二是了解毒素的产生以及毒素如何通过空气和水中暴露影响健康。三是开发加强监测和预报的新技术。在与机构和社区合作伙伴的合作下，该小组将把调查结果整合到最先进的预测和其他数据产品中，以接触到广泛的利益相关者受众。社区参与核心(CEC)将把中心科学与相关社区联系起来，促进共同设计研究并将研究成果传达给利益相关者。该团队将利用该中心的研究事业，在海洋和人类健康领域招聘和培训多样化的下一代科学家，包括支持研究生和博士后。该中心将在研究和参与的所有方面促进包容性。总之，这些研究、参与和培训活动将推动实现所宣布的目标，即了解和转化气候变化对大湖区CHAB事件的影响及其对人类健康的威胁。该中心由NSF海洋科学部和国家环境健康科学研究所(NIEHS)共同支持。中心的研究围绕四个不同但高度整合的项目进行。项目1试图确定气候变化如何影响Chab分类群的增殖和毒素生产。该项目将使用多管齐下的现场-实验室实验方法来检验这一假设，即气候驱动的事件(例如风暴)影响几类氰化毒素(微囊藻毒素、类毒素、黑曲霉毒素和鱼腥藻毒素)、味道和气味化合物以及大气圈相互作用。项目2试图揭示已知和未发现的毒素和其他次生代谢物的多样性、时空分布和生物活性。该项目将使用多种方法(包括元基因组学、转录组学和代谢组学)来表征新出现的毒素和生物活性化合物的多样性，这些物质目前在常规水质分析方法中是不可见的。项目3将研究CHAB细胞的毒素释放、气雾化和运输，以检验气候变化将通过摄入和吸入增加人类接触CHAB毒素的假设。将使用测量和建模相结合的方法来评估气候变化驱动的压力源对水体和cHAB产生的气溶胶中溶解和颗粒毒素分布的影响，从而能够预测在不断变化的气候下毒素暴露。项目4将评估气雾化毒素对人类健康的影响，特别关注因哮喘等先前存在的疾病而易受伤害的人群。项目4将测试总体假设，即暴露在雾化氰基毒素中会导致呼吸道上皮显着炎症，哮喘患者特别容易受到Chab气雾剂的影响。结合其他三个项目的结果，这项工作将能够在当前条件和未来气候情景下评估Chab毒素对人体健康的风险。总而言之，五大湖淡水与人类健康中心旨在通过合作研究、参与努力和培训倡议来了解和传达面对气候变化的cHAB的风险。这一奖项反映了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。