Tracking pollutants as continua throughout the Thames drainage basin

连续跟踪整个泰晤士流域的污染物

基本信息

批准号：
NE/X010805/1
负责人：
Gareth Garmon Roberts
金额：
$ 10.27万
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：
2022
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2022 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FX010805%2F1
关键词：
Tracking pollutants continua throughout Thames

项目摘要

The state of UK river waters and their chemical contamination is of growing concern. Pesticides, pharmaceuticals, illegal drugs, plastic-related chemicals, and personal care products are now found throughout UK rivers. At toxic concentrations they have serious adverse impacts on the health of animals and plants that rely on rivers and on humans that use them. A crucial step towards improving the quality of our waterways is to identify the locations of toxic concentrations of chemicals and where they came from. A big challenge is developing the means (data and theory) to quantify chemical concentrations throughout entire drainage basins, which can have point and widespread sources of pollutants. Additionally, identifying sources of pollutants is complicated by the mixing and dispersal of chemicals as they move downstream. To address these challenges, we will combine new, large, inventories of spot measurements of contaminants of emerging concern with newly developed computational models that will allow us to generate continuous predictions of chemical concentrations. This combination of state-of-the-art environmental monitoring data and computational techniques will allow us, for the first time, to generate continuous predictions of element concentrations throughout entire basins. Such continuous predictions will provide the knowledge necessary to identify all river reaches (not just those upstream of sample sites) with toxic chemical concentrations. They will be used to identify sources of pollutants, especially diffuse sources (e.g. agricultural runoff), which are currently very difficult to identify with existing monitoring techniques. In this project we will focus on the River Thames and its tributaries where the concentrations of >100 contaminants of emerging concern (CEC) have recently been measured by academics and the Environment Agency. The Thames drains the UK's most populous drainage basin and is a conduit for a large range of natural and man-made chemical that are inserted into its drainage network. The new maps of chemical concentrations will identify localities along rivers where urgent remediation is required, and, importantly, identify point (e.g. from waste water treatment plants) and wide-spread (e.g. pesticides from agriculture) sources of pollutants. In this proof-of-concept study, we will show how modern environmental monitoring techniques can be combined with cutting-edge computational techniques to generate transferable tools to quantify concentrations of diverse chemicals throughout drainage basin. The framework developed in this study will be used in future application of advanced techniques for continuous monitoring of drainage basins in the UK and beyond.

英国河水及其化学污染的关注程度越来越大。现在在英国河流中发现农药，药品，非法药物，与塑料相关的化学药品和个人护理产品。在有毒浓度下，它们对依赖河流和使用它们的人类的动物和植物的健康产生了严重的不利影响。提高水道质量的关键步骤是确定有毒化学物质浓度的位置以及它们的来源。一个巨大的挑战是开发平均（数据和理论）来量化整个排水盆地的化学浓度，这些化学浓度可以具有污染物的点和广泛来源。另外，识别污染物的来源是由于化学物质在下游移动时的混合和分散而变得复杂。为了应对这些挑战，我们将结合新开发的计算模型的新的，大的，大型的污染物污染物的现货测量，这将使我们能够产生对化学浓度的连续预测。最先进的环境监测数据和计算技术的组合将使我们首次产生整个盆地元素浓度的连续预测。这种连续的预测将提供必要的知识，以识别具有有毒化学浓度的所有河流范围（不仅是样本位点上游）。它们将用于识别污染物的来源，尤其是弥漫源（例如农业径流），目前很难使用现有的监测技术来识别。在这个项目中，我们将重点关注泰晤士河及其支流，这些河流及其浓度> 100个污染物（CEC）最近由学者和环境局衡量。泰晤士河排出了英国人口最多的排水盆地，并且是插入其排水网络中各种天然和人造化学物质的管道。化学浓度的新地图将确定需要紧急补救的河流地区，并重要的是，确定污染物的范围（例如，从废水处理厂中）和广泛的污染物来源（例如农业的农药）。在这项概念验证的研究中，我们将展示如何将现代环境监测技术与尖端计算技术结合使用，以生成可转移的工具，以量化整个排水盆地中各种化学物质的浓度。这项研究中开发的框架将用于未来应用高级技术，以连续监测英国及其他地区的排水盆地。