New assessment tools combining forensic paleolimnology, biotransport, and predictive modelling to determine potential impacts of mink farming in rural Nova Scotia

据报道，貂皮是新斯科舍省最大的农业出口产品，在收入方面仅与乳制品相当。然而，许多居民、流域组织和非政府组织将水貂养殖与反复出现的藻华、水质差和区域淡水鱼类栖息地减少联系在一起。由于缺乏长期水质数据，监管机构和当地利益相关者受到阻碍，两极分化的辩论仍在继续。我们的总体目标是发展“法医古湖泊学”领域，并将我们新颖的、以时间为重点的方法与预测湖泊建模相结合。与我们的HQP和当地利益相关者合作，我们将使用现有的和我们新开发的“指纹”工具，我们将继续改进，以确定水貂养殖场（相对于其他农业径流和土地利用变化来源）的营养物质，金属和持久性有机污染物（POPs）的相对贡献，这些污染物可能导致藻华和整体水质恶化。包括潜在的鱼类栖息地丧失和水生食物网的改变。该提案将大学研究人员和合作伙伴与不同的专业知识（如建模师、工程师、生物学家、化学家、古湖泊学家）和当地知识联系起来，开发独特但互补的工具，以重建过去，研究现在，并模拟未来湖泊的水质轨迹，这些轨迹可能受到水貂养殖、历史农业/土地利用变化和气候变化的影响。通过与合作伙伴的合作，我们的战略性湖泊选择将使我们能够在适当的时间和空间尺度上为监管机构和利益相关者提供关键信息，以确定管理和潜在的额外缓解政策，以帮助解决关于水貂养殖场对环境影响的两极分化辩论。在这个项目中开发的技术将很容易出口到加拿大其他农业地区和其他面临水质问题的地方

Mink pelts are reported to be Nova Scotia's greatest agricultural export and are comparable only to dairy products in terms of revenues. However, many residents, watershed groups, and NGOs associate mink farming with recurring algal blooms, poor water quality, and declining fish habitat within regional freshwaters. Polarized debates continue as regulators and local stakeholders are hampered by the lack of long-term water quality data. Our overall goal is to develop the field of "forensic paleolimnology" and integrate our novel, time-focused approaches with predictive lake modelling. Working with our HQP and local stakeholders, we will use both established and our newly developed "fingerprinting" tools, which we will continue to refine, to determine the relative contributions from mink farms (as opposed to other sources of agricultural runoff and land-use changes) of nutrients, metals, and persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that may lead to algal blooms and overall deterioration of water quality, including potential loss of fish habitat and alteration of aquatic food webs. This proposal links university researchers and partners with diverse expertise (e.g., modellers, engineers, biologists, chemists, paleolimnologists) and local knowledge to develop distinct, yet complementary, tools to reconstruct the past, study the present, and model future water quality trajectories in lakes potentially affected by mink farming, historic agriculture/land-use shifts, and climatic change. Working with our partners, our strategic lake selection will allow us to provide regulators and stakeholders with the critical information, at appropriate temporal and spatial scales, to determine management and potential additional mitigation policies needed to help resolve the polarized debate on the environmental impacts of mink farms. The techniques developed in this project will be readily exportable to other agricultural regions in Canada and elsewhere faced with water quality issues.**