"Development of a new biological indicator of land-use change, road-salt contamination and mine tailing remediation"

生物指标是检测和记录农业、工业和住宅用地变化的重要工具。阿米巴原虫是一组有壳原生动物，是其中的一个类群，存在于从湖泊、池塘到泥炭地和潮湿土壤等广泛的水生环境中。 在这组凝集的形式，主要是arcellacea，具有高度耐腐的外壳，因此具有良好的耐腐性，这一特性可能使它们成为追踪湖泊环境历史的工具。已经进行了非常少的系统的研究，测试的反应，thecamoebians特定梯度（如磷负荷，金属污染，pH值，温度，道路盐污染），并没有尝试使用它们定量重建特定的湖泊环境参数随着时间的推移。我的研究计划，通过未来五年的重点将是开发湖thecamoebians作为一个有效的代理在检测和记录土地利用变化，道路盐污染和矿山尾矿整治。 这项研究将涉及在加拿大一些地区进行的一系列研究，这些地区以前的侦察研究表明，存在特定的环境梯度，可以为包括这项研究计划在内的更系统的研究提供基线。这项研究计划将是新颖的和有意义的，因为它将：1）提供了一个更好的了解生态的thecamoebians在小湖泊和潮湿的森林土壤，并评估其潜力监测土地利用变化; 2）开发thecamoebians作为监测农业、城市和工业污染环境中污染水平的定量工具，以及评估矿山尾矿污染湖泊修复尝试的成功; 3）确定囊变形虫作为湖泊盐污染生物指示剂的效用，并将其开发为盐污染监测的定量工具。

Biological indicators are important tools in detecting and documenting agricultural, industrial and residential land-use change. Thecamoebians, a group of shelled protozoans, comprise one such group that are found in a wide array of aquatic environments from lakes and ponds to peatlands and damp soils. Among this group agglutinating forms, primarily arcellacea, have shells that are highly resistant to decay and thus fossilize well, a characteristic that potentially makes them valuable as tools to trace the environmental history of lakes. There have been very few systematic studies carried out that test the response of thecamoebians to specific gradients (e.g. phosphorous loading, metal contamination, pH, temperature, road salt contamination) and no attempt has been made to use them quantitatively to reconstruct particular lake environmental parameters over time. The focus of my research program through the next five years will be to develop lake thecamoebians as an effective proxy in the detection and documentation of land use change, road salt contamination and mine-tailings remediation. The research will involve a series of studies in regions of Canada where previous reconnaissance research has shown that specific environmental gradients exist that can provide the baseline for the more systematic research that will comprise this research program. This research program will be novel and of significance in that it will; 1) provide an improved understanding of the ecology of thecamoebians in small lakes and damp forest soils, and an evaluation of their potential for monitoring land use change; 2) develop thecamoebians as a quantitative tool in monitoring contamination levels in agricultural, urban and industrially contaminated settings, and for assessing the success of remediation attempts in mine tailing polluted lakes, and 3) determine the utility of thecamoebians as bio-indicators of salt contamination in lakes, and to develop them as a quantitative tool for salt contamination monitoring.