Quantifying ecosystem resilience: catastrophic collapse and recovery of a large river food web

量化生态系统恢复力：大型河流食物网的灾难性崩溃和恢复

• 批准号: NE/L008491/1
• 负责人: Guy Woodward
• 金额: $ 6.67万
• 依托单位: Imperial College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2013 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FL008491%2F1
• 关键词: Quantifying; ecosystem; resilience; catastrophic; collapse

In early July 2013 the impacts of one of the UK's largest pesticide pollution events were first detected by citizen scientists involved in biomonitoring of riverfly populations along the River Kennet, as local extinctions of invertebrate life were reported along 15km of the river's length. The Environment Agency were notified and the source of the spill has so far been tracked back to a water treatment works in Marlborough, where it appears the widely-used organophosphate pesticide Chlorpyrifos was accidentally discharged into the river. Further discharges from the treatment works were immediately suspended: thus we are dealing with a single point source event that has affected over 1/3 of the entire river. This Urgency Grant is designed to sample the river's biota as comprehensively as possible over multiple scales in space (from local patches to 100m reaches, over 6km of the river's length) and time (from days to one year after the spill) and across multiple levels of biological organization (from genes-to-ecosystems). The samples we will collect will enable us to assess both the impact and initial recovery following the spill. We also have access to extensive citizen scientist biomonitoring data collect by ARK volunteers on a monthly basis from dozens of sites along the river both before and after the impact., which will complement our new intensive sampling. Our sample collection will be spaced through time at approximately logarithmic intervals from the date of the spill, so we can front-load it towards the initial acute and direct phase, while also being able to track chronic and indirect effects as the perturbation ripples through the food web. This unique case study will give us invaluable new insights into of the fragility and resilience of natural systems, and especially of how pesticide effects are felt far beyond those of their usual target organisms (invertebrates in this case). We have selected 6 study reaches (3 upstream and 3 downstream of the spill, separated by 1km intervals), and profound effects are already evident beyond those of invertebrate extinctions: for instance, fish are being left without food and microbes without consumers to keep them in check. The food web is therefore already undergoing profound restructuring, which we predict will continue to intensify in the immediate aftermath of the spill before entering the recovery phase - the pesticide has a very short residence time, so effects being manifested now are the consequences of its extirpation of the invertebrate fauna.As Urgency grants are limited to 1 year of funding and £65k we are focusing on urgent sample collection and preliminary laboratory processing, with minimal analytical work targeting a subset of samples, dates and sites. We will apply to process the remainder via other funding schemes (e.g. NERC Standard Grants). Our interdisciplinary team will collect an unprecedented breadth and depth of samples: from molecular metasystematics, to quantitative food web characterization and multiple measures of ecosystem functioning. The data will allow us to ask numerous novel questions in both pure and applied ecology, and to investigate the still largely unknown links across organizational levels. For instance, do the microbial biofilms switch on specific genes to process the pesticide and do their blooms when released from control by invertebrates threaten the local fish populations by pushing the system towards anoxia at night as respiration strips the oxygen from the water? Such complex, indirect effects cannot be detected in traditional laboratory ecotoxicological studies - they can only be seen in large field perturbations, but such a comprehensive and co-ordinated coverage of responses to a pesticide spill have never been attempted before. This study will deliver uniquely valuable samples - and ultimately data - to address this glaring gap in our current knowledge of stressor impacts in fresh waters.

2013年7月初，参与肯尼特河沿着河蝇种群生物监测的公民科学家首次发现了英国最大的农药污染事件之一的影响，因为当地无脊椎动物的数量报告了河流沿着15公里的长度。环境署得到了通知，到目前为止，泄漏的源头已经追溯到马尔伯勒的一个水处理厂，在那里，广泛使用的有机磷农药毒死蜱似乎被意外排放到河里。处理厂的进一步排放立即暂停：因此，我们正在处理一个单一的点源事件，影响了整个河流的三分之一以上。这项紧急拨款旨在尽可能全面地在空间（从局部斑块到100米河段，超过6公里的河流长度）和时间（从泄漏后的几天到一年）以及生物组织的多个层次（从基因到生态系统）上对河流生物群进行采样。我们将收集的样本将使我们能够评估泄漏后的影响和初步恢复。我们还可以访问方舟志愿者每月从河流沿着的数十个地点收集的大量公民科学家生物监测数据，包括撞击前后的数据。这将补充我们新的密集采样我们的样本收集将从泄漏日期开始以近似对数的时间间隔间隔进行，因此我们可以将其提前到最初的急性和直接阶段，同时还能够跟踪扰动在食物网中传播的慢性和间接影响。这一独特的案例研究将为我们提供宝贵的新见解，了解自然系统的脆弱性和恢复力，特别是杀虫剂的影响如何远远超出其通常的目标生物（在这种情况下是无脊椎动物）。我们选择了6个研究河段（3个上游和3个下游的泄漏，相隔1公里），深远的影响已经明显超出了无脊椎动物的灭绝：例如，鱼类没有食物，微生物没有消费者来控制它们。因此，食物网已经在经历深刻的重组，我们预测，在进入恢复阶段之前，这种重组将在漏油事件发生后立即继续加剧--农药的停留时间很短，因此，现在表现出来的影响是其灭绝无脊椎动物的后果。由于紧急赠款仅限于1年的资金和6.5万英镑，我们专注于紧急样本收集，初步实验室处理，针对样本、日期和地点的子集进行最低限度的分析工作。我们将通过其他资助计划（例如NERC标准赠款）申请处理剩余资金。我们的跨学科团队将收集前所未有的样本广度和深度：从分子元系统学到定量食物网表征和生态系统功能的多种措施。这些数据将使我们能够在纯生态学和应用生态学中提出许多新颖的问题，并调查组织层面上仍然未知的联系。例如，微生物生物膜是否会开启特定的基因来处理杀虫剂，当无脊椎动物释放杀虫剂时，它们的大量繁殖是否会威胁到当地的鱼类种群，因为呼吸作用会使水中的氧气在夜间进入缺氧状态？这种复杂的间接影响无法在传统的实验室生态毒理学研究中检测到--它们只能在大规模的实地扰动中看到，但以前从未尝试过对农药泄漏的反应进行如此全面和协调的覆盖。这项研究将提供独特的有价值的样本-最终的数据-以解决我们目前对淡水沃茨压力源影响的认识中的这一明显差距。

项目成果

Gene-to-ecosystem impacts of a catastrophic pesticide spill: testing a multilevel bioassessment approach in a river ecosystem

• DOI: 10.1111/fwb.12676
• 发表时间: 2016-12
• 期刊: Freshwater Biology
• 影响因子: 2.7
• 作者: M. Thompson;M. Thompson;C. Bankier;T. Bell;A. Dumbrell;Clare Gray;Clare Gray;M. Ledger;Katja Leh

Linking biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human well-being: three challenges for designing research for sustainability

• DOI: 10.1016/j.cosust.2015.03.007
• 发表时间: 2015-06-01
• 期刊: CURRENT OPINION IN ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
• 影响因子: 7.2
• 作者: Bennett, Elena M.;Cramer, Wolfgang;Woodward, Guy
• 通讯作者: Woodward, Guy