Towards a regional monitoring framework for cumulative impacts assessment in the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence: monitoring fate and effects of agrichemicals

由于城市发展、农业和气候变化，河口和沿海地区在国际上面临着环境压力。在圣劳伦斯湾南部的沉积物中，观察到来自陆地的营养物质和污染物对这些环境产生了重大的不利影响。在高风险污染物中，最重要的是对无脊椎动物，特别是龙虾等甲壳类动物具有剧毒的杀虫剂。诺森伯兰海峡部分地区龙虾种群的崩溃，鱼类和无脊椎动物种群的变化，以及在当地河口检测到农药残留，提供了强有力的初步证据，支持农药可能对南湾近岸海洋环境产生重大影响的假设。使用具有生态和经济重要性的甲壳类无脊椎动物，即龙虾和角足类的生物工具，将被用来评估这些无脊椎动物对 为了确定河口沉积物是否对这些生物体有毒，有必要对感兴趣的杀虫剂进行监测。将进行实地研究，以确定除杀虫剂外，是否还有其他因素在影响两足类动物。除了杀虫剂和沉积物毒性外，还将开发针对龙虾的新兴分子技术，以评估杀虫剂的微妙亚致死效应。这项研究还将开发快速、经济的化学技术来筛选沉积物中的农药。这些新技术以及其他高度敏感的技术将被用于测量诺森伯兰海峡及其附近河口沉积物中的杀虫剂，以确定化学残留是否与生物结果有关。在开发生物和化学监测工具的过程中，除了开发实用技术监测该区域污染物造成的严重危害外，还将回答农药是否在诺森伯兰海峡产生重大生物影响的问题。

Estuaries and coastal zones are under environmental pressures internationally due to urban development, agriculture, and climate change. In the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence sediments, nutrients and contaminants from land have been observed to have significant adverse impacts on these environments. Foremost among high risk contaminants are pesticides that are highly toxic to invertebrates, particularly crustaceans such as lobster. The collapse of lobster populations in parts of the Northumberland Strait and changes to fish and invertebrate populations and the detection of pesticide residues in local estuaries provide strong preliminary evidence to support the hypothesis that pesticides may be exerting significant impacts on the nearshore marine environment in the Southern Gulf. Biological tools using ecologically and economically important crustacean invertebrates, namely lobster and amphipods, will be used to evaluate the sensitivity of these invertebrates to the pesticides of interest and to determine if estuarine sediments are toxic to those organisms. Field studies will be conducted to determine if other factors, in combination with, or other than pesticides, are influencing amphipods. In addition to pesticide and sediment toxicity, emerging molecular techniques will be developed for lobster in order to evaluate subtle sublethal effects of pesticides. This research will also develop rapid and economical chemical techniques to screen sediment for pesticides. Those new techniques, and other highly sensitive techniques, will be used to measure pesticides in sediments from the Northumberland Strait and estuaries bordering it in order to determine if chemical residues can be related to the biological results. In the course of the development of biological and chemical monitoring tools, the question of whether pesticides are having significant biological effects in the Northumberland Strait will be answered in addition to the development of practical techniques to monitor serious harm from contaminants in the region.