"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、工业和住宅土地利用变化的重要工具。壳毛虫是一组带壳原生动物，它们存在于从湖泊、池塘到泥炭地和潮湿土壤的各种水生环境中。 在这一群体中，凝集形式（主要是arcellacea）具有高度耐腐烂的外壳，因此可以很好地形成化石，这一特性可能使它们成为追踪湖泊环境历史的工具。很少有系统的研究来测试卡莫比生物对特定梯度（例如磷负荷、金属污染、pH、温度、道路盐污染）的响应，并且没有尝试定量地使用它们来重建特定的湖泊环境参数随时间的变化。未来五年我的研究计划的重点将是开发卡莫比湖作为检测和记录土地利用变化、道路盐污染和尾矿修复的有效代理。 该研究将涉及加拿大地区的一系列研究，先前的勘察研究表明，这些地区存在特定的环境梯度，可以为构成该研究计划的更系统的研究提供基线。该研究计划将是新颖且具有重要意义的： 1) 更好地了解小湖泊和潮湿森林土壤中的喀莫比人的生态，并评估其监测土地利用变化的潜力； 2) 开发卡莫比生物作为监测农业、城市和工业污染环境污染水平的定量工具，并评估尾矿污染湖泊修复尝试的成功与否，以及 3) 确定卡莫比生物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.