Visualising Pathogen & Environmental Risk: transition to a user-ready toolkit (ViPER II)

农业实践通过直接排便、放牧牲畜以及使用固体和液体肥料，向牧场贡献了大量的粪便物质。管理这种粪便向牧场的空间和时间输入是重要的，以便最大限度地减少粪便微生物的比例，例如大肠杆菌，这些微生物可能在降雨后从粪便来源冲刷并以径流形式转移到附近的水道。受污染的径流可能会导致我们的溪流、河流和海洋受到微生物污染。因此，科学家、环境监管机构、流域管理人员和政策制定者热衷于了解大肠杆菌如何在环境中生存和移动，以期更好地了解这些微生物行为特征的知识和数据，将提高我们模拟和预测它们与周围世界的相互作用和反应的能力。国家环境研究中心资助的项目ReMOFIO(NE/J004456/1)开发了一个这样的模型，以改善我们对景观中微生物风险的大小和空间分布的了解。由此产生的REMOFIO模型根据牲畜数量、耕作方式和环境条件(如降雨和温度波动)下的大肠杆菌生存模式，预测了农田上微生物风险的水平。尽管该模型在结构上很简单，但其操作和功能最初并不是为了最大限度地让那些从其使用中受益的人获得最大收益而设计的。作为回应，最初的Viper项目使用参与性方法，将一系列利益攸关方(监管者、流域管理人员、科学家和农场网络)聚集在一起，以促进参与、审议和联合决策。通过结构化的知识交流过程，项目组开发了一个免费可用的原型决策支持工具(DST)，称为Viper。Viper DST提供了一个用户友好的界面，允许没有特定建模技能或建模系统知识的最终用户利用现有的NERC科学和建模能力(例如ReMOFIO模型)来了解大肠杆菌风险如何、何时和在哪里在农业土地上累积。然而，在目前的形式下，Viper无法评估农业用地上的大肠杆菌来源中有多大比例会在降雨后最终进入河流和溪流。作为回应，Viper II的目标是现在将我们的原型DST(绘制田间、农场和集水区规模的大肠杆菌风险图)转变为用户就绪的工具包，用于在现实世界中提供农场建议和指导。为此，我们将把Viper DST与另一种由NERC资助的免费提供的水文风险测绘工具SCIMAP(NE/C508850/1)结合起来。SCIMAP旨在确定景观中沉积物和营养污染物的来源，重要的是，它绘制了径流如何将沉积物和营养物质通过土壤表面转移到水道中。然而，SCIMAP目前没有绘制景观中微生物风险的地图，因为与沉积物和营养物质不同，大肠杆菌等细菌适应了复杂的生命周期，并将随着时间的推移而死亡。相比之下，Viper能够解释大肠杆菌的死亡，但缺乏预测大肠杆菌随径流转移的能力。现在有机会整合两个由NERC资助的产出(Viper和SCIMAP)，以提供一个创新的DST，用于测绘集水系统中的微生物污染风险，并产生一个大于其单个部分总和的DST。由此产生的工具包将为陆地微生物风险评估以及英国环境监管机构和水务行业的应用利益(以及更远的地区)提供附加值。这是确保NERC资助的模型和数据产生实际影响的下一个关键步骤，方法是创新地将基础证据基础转化为相关最终用户可广泛使用的格式。

Agricultural practices contribute a significant amount of faecal material onto pasture via direct defecation by grazing livestock and through applications of solid and liquid manures. Managing the spatial and temporal input of this faecal loading to pasture is important in order to minimise the proportion of faecal microorganisms, e.g. E. coli, that may be washed from faecal sources and transferred in runoff to nearby watercourses following rainfall. Contaminated runoff can lead to microbial pollution of our streams, rivers and seas. Scientists, environmental regulators, catchment managers and policy-makers are therefore keen to understand how E. coli survives and moves in the environment with a view that better knowledge and data on the behavioural characteristics of these microorganisms will improve our ability to model and predict their interactions with, and responses to, the world around us. The NERC-funded project ReMOFIO (NE/J004456/1) developed one such model to improve our understanding of the magnitude and spatial distribution of microbial risks in the landscape. The resulting ReMOFIO model predicts levels of microbial risk on agricultural land, based on livestock numbers, farming practices and E. coli survival patterns under environmental conditions (e.g. rainfall and temperature fluctuations). While the model is structurally simple its operation & functionality was not originally designed to maximise uptake by those who would benefit most from its use. In response, the original ViPER project used a participatory approach to bring together a range of stakeholders (regulators, catchment managers, scientists and farm networks) to promote engagement, deliberation and joint decision-making. Through a structured process of knowledge exchange the project team developed a freely-available prototype decision support tool (DST) called ViPER. The ViPER DST provides a user-friendly interface and allows end-users without specific modelling skills or knowledge of a modelling system to take advantage of existing NERC science and modelling capability (e.g. the ReMOFIO model) to understand how, when and where E. coli risks accumulate on agricultural land. However, in its current form, ViPER is unable to evaluate what proportion of that E. coli source on agricultural land will actually end up in rivers and streams following rainfall. In response, the aim of ViPER II is to now transition our prototype DST, which maps E. coli risks at the field, farm and catchment scale, into a user-ready toolkit for providing on-farm advice and guidance in the real world. To do this we will combine the ViPER DST with another freely-available NERC-funded hydrological risk-mapping tool called SCIMAP (NE/C508850/1). SCIMAP was designed to identify the origins of sediment and nutrient pollutants in the landscape and importantly, it maps how runoff can transfer sediment and nutrients across the soil surface and into watercourses. However, SCIMAP currently does not map microbial risks in the landscape because, unlike sediment and nutrients, bacteria such as E. coli accommodate a complex life-cycle and will die-off over time. By contrast, ViPER is able to account for the die-off of E. coli but lacks the capacity to predict E. coli transfer with runoff. An opportunity now exists to integrate two NERC-funded outputs (ViPER & SCIMAP) to deliver an innovative DST for mapping microbial pollution risks in catchment systems and to produce a DST that is greater than the sum of its individual parts. The resulting toolkit will provide added value both to land based assessment of microbial risks, and to the applied interests of environmental regulators and the water industry in the UK (& further afield). This represents the next critical step in ensuring that NERC funded models and data deliver real-world impact through innovative conversion of the underpinning evidence-base into a format that is widely accessible by relevant end-users.