1000 individually-controlled microcosms to assess ecological impacts in Canadian ecosystems, aquaculture, and agriculture

加拿大的水产养殖和农业将受到全球变化和当地压力因素的复杂组合。结合我们的工程和生态专业知识，我们将开发和应用一个测量生物体和社区对多种环境参数的响应的平台。这项工作得益于基于气凝胶的气体梯度发生器的新概念，它实现了对微井中局部二氧化碳和O2浓度的前所未有的控制。这项气体控制技术将与投影光学和基于微孔板的液体处理相结合，以实现对具有广泛特征不同参数的全因数数据集进行1000次并行处理的实验。这项为期3年的成果是一个商业化的筛选平台，能够量化模型微生物、动植物对关键环境变量的反应。该项目提供了与加拿大水产养殖(Nova Heavest)和农业(POS Biosciences)直接相关的数据，并利用了加拿大产品开发的卓越优势(Quorum Technologies)。该方法和通过该项目产生的数据都直接针对“环境和农业”目标区。具体地说，我们将限定全球和局部人为应激源对水环境的影响。此外，这项技术将使加拿大多家公司能够适应气候变化，适应农业和水产养殖业。该项目与加拿大领导者密切合作，包括水产养殖业(Nova收获)、农业(POS生物科学)和设备开发(Quorum Technologies)，该项目将提供行业就绪的筛选技术，并开发优秀的HQP和新工具，以评估加拿大和世界各地的气候变化影响。

Canadian aquaculture and agriculture will be subject to a complex mix of global change in combination with local stressors. With our combined engineering-ecological expertise we will develop and apply a platform for measuring organism and community responses to multiple environmental parameters. This work is enabled by the novel concept of an aerogel-based gas gradient generator that achieves unprecedented control of local CO2 and O2 concentration over microwells. This gas control technology will be combined with projection optics and microwell plate-based liquid handling to enable experiments with 1000+ parallel treatments for full-factorial data sets with a wide spectrum of characteristically different parameters. The 3-year deliverable is a commercialization-ready screening platform capable of quantifying the response of model microorganisms, flora, and fauna to key environmental variables. The project provides data directly relevant to Canadian aquaculture (Nova Harvest) and agriculture (POS Biosciences) and leverages Canadian product development excellence (Quorum Technologies). Both the method and the data produced through this project directly address the "Environment and Agriculture" target area. Specifically, we will qualify the impact of global and local anthropogenic stressors on the aquatic environment. Moreover, the technology will equip a broad range of Canadian companies to adapt agriculture and aquaculture for a changing climate. In close partnership with Canadian leaders aquaculture (Nova Harvest), agriculture (POS Biosciences), and device development (Quorum Technologies), this project will provide both industry-ready screening technology, and develop outstanding HQP with new tools to assess climate change impacts in Canada and worldwide.