"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。变形虫是一组有壳的原生动物，包括一个这样的组，在从湖泊和池塘到泥炭地和潮湿土壤的广泛的水环境中发现。在这组凝集形式中，主要是蓝藻，具有高度抵抗腐烂的贝壳，因此很好地形成化石，这一特征使它们有可能成为追踪湖泊环境历史的工具。很少有系统的研究测试变形虫对特定梯度(如磷负荷、金属污染、pH、温度、道路盐污染)的反应，也没有尝试使用它们来定量地重建特定的湖泊环境参数。在接下来的五年里，我的研究计划的重点将是发展湖泊变形虫，作为土地利用变化、道路盐污染和尾矿修复的检测和记录的有效代理。这项研究将涉及加拿大各地区的一系列研究，在这些地区，以前的侦察研究表明，存在特定的环境梯度，可以为构成这一研究计划的更系统的研究提供基线。这项研究计划将是新颖和重要的，因为它将：1)提供对小湖泊和潮湿森林土壤中的变形虫生态的更好的了解，并对其用于监测土地利用变化的潜力进行评估；2)开发变形虫作为一种定量工具，用于监测农业、城市和工业污染环境中的污染水平，并用于评估尾矿污染湖泊修复尝试的成功；以及3)确定将变形虫作为湖泊盐分污染的生物指标的效用，并将其开发为盐分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.