Improving management and protection of drinking water supplies and environmental sustainability in urban settings

淡水生态系统的管理、保护和恢复是全球范围内的中心环境问题。特别是，水管理者必须应对快速的城市发展及其对水体的相关负面影响。这个多学科项目围绕四个研究轴建立，旨在为城市水资源管理者提供额外的工具，以更好地监测和保护水生生态系统，特别关注城市环境。轴1的目的是通过将生物监测数据（基于藻类）与人类活动相关风险相结合，对饮用水供应脆弱性进行流域规模的评估。简而言之，轴1的目的是在流域尺度上将联合收割机生物完整性数据和土地利用信息结合起来，为市政当局提供更完整的供水脆弱性描述。城市雨水径流是对饮用水源的一个重大威胁，而轴线2、3和4旨在解决这一问题。雨水滞留池（SWRP）是一种常见的缓解措施，以减少城市径流和轴2的目的是确定其积极的结果（污染物保留），并评估其污水上游和下游的接收环境的生物完整性。轴3的目标是估算城市SWRP中的生物多样性，而轴4的目标是估算SWRP提供的生态系统服务的货币价值（以美元计）。最终，这个项目的目标是提供一个评估的好处，建造绿色基础设施提供给纳税人，然后可以作为一种工具，在经济，社会，政治和生态的话语和决策。更好地管理雨水径流是饮用水源保护的一个关键方面。拟议的研究计划将导致四名硕士生，两名本科生和一名技术人员的培训。

Management, protection, and rehabilitation of freshwater ecosystems are central environmental concerns on a global scale. In particular, water managers must deal with rapid urban development and their associated negative consequences on water bodies. This multi-disciplinary project is built around four research axes that all aim at providing urban water managers with additional tools to better monitor and conserve aquatic ecosystems, with a particular focus on urban environments. The purpose of Axis 1 is to develop a watershed-scale assessment of drinking water supply vulnerability by coupling biomonitoring data (algae based) and human activity related risks. Simply stated, the aim of Axis 1 is to combine biological integrity data and land use information, at the watershed scale, to provide municipalities with a more complete portrait of water supply vulnerability. One significant threat to drinking water sources is urban stormwater runoff and Axes 2, 3, and 4 are designed to address this problem. Stormwater retention ponds (SWRPs) are a common mitigation practice to reduce urban runoff and Axis 2 aims to determine their positive outcomes (contaminant retention) and to evaluate the biological integrity of receiving environments upstream and downstream of their effluents. The objective of Axis 3 is to estimate the biodiversity in urban SWRPs, while the aim of Axis 4 is to estimate the monetary value, in dollars, of ecosystem services provided by SWRPs. Ultimately, the goal of this project is to provide an assessment of the benefits that constructed green infrastructures provide to taxpayers, which could then be used as a tool in economic, social, political, and ecological discourse and decision-making. Better management of stormwater runoff is one key aspect of drinking water source protection. The proposed research program will lead to the training of four Master's students, two undergraduate trainees, and one technician.