Terrestrial Ecosystem Services and the Recovery of Damaged Aquatic Ecosystems

北方冰盾地区大面积的水资源丰富，受到工业发展的影响，并受到与气候变化或汞等全球污染物有关的多种压力因素的威胁。管理机构认识到采取“生态系统方法”的重要性，但许多管理计划，例如鱼类放养、湖泊石灰和溪流修复工作，往往追求与陆地发生的变化脱钩的水生目标。因此，我们未能充分利用“生态系统服务”（例如，营养供应、水净化、污染物滞留、洪水控制等）。健康的土地提供的。 我的研究计划解决了需要考虑这些土地/水的联系，以增加我们对“健康的土地=健康的水”的理解。我的学生，同事和我专注于极度受损的系统（例如加拿大萨德伯里附近受采矿影响的流域），其中存在急剧的空间梯度干扰。在这些受干扰的流域，我们能够清楚地确定陆地生态系统服务如何运作，以及如何优化它们，使受损的水生系统在恢复的早期，中期和后期阶段受益。例如，我们展示了重新造林如何影响地表风和湖泊分层，湿地中的金属保留，以及陆地DOC作为营养补贴以刺激整个食物网（微生物鱼）的作用。我们还使用了最新的分子生物学工具来分离陆地干扰（火灾，伐木，采矿和城市化）的独特微生物特征，以显示陆地来源的溶解有机物如何影响暴露于亚致死水平的Cu的水生生物的代谢和繁殖。这些结果将有助于指导决策者制定减少空气污染的目标。 在恢复生态学中，经常会有“惊喜”，例如，在恢复的某些阶段，一个严重的压力可能实际上表现出有益的作用。 我们先前的研究发现，冶炼厂排放的具有潜在毒性的硒导致萨德伯里地区鱼类体内汞的生物累积减少，这就是一个很好的例子（Belzile等人，2006年，欧洲司法和科学研究中心）。对于这项资助，我的学生将为类似的发现做准备，因为他们将研究外来入侵的森林昆虫（例如舞毒蛾）是否真的可以加速健康森林土壤的形成，以保护下游的水生系统。他们还将尝试发现各种生物评估技术（包括微生物群落功能的测量）是否可以评估城市/工业流域“绿色处理方案”的有效性。最后，他们将试图通过对鱼肠道微生物组的分析，确定在系统恢复的最后阶段暴露于亚致死水平的金属对鱼类的影响。

Vast areas of the water-rich Boreal Shield landscape are impacted by industrial development and are threatened by multiple stressors associated with climate change or global contaminants such as Hg. Management agencies recognize the importance of taking an “ecosystem approach” however many management programs, such as fish stocking, lake liming and stream rehabilitation efforts often pursue aquatic goals that are decoupled from the changes occurring on land. We therefore fail to take full advantage of the "ecosystem services" (e.g. nutrient provision, water polishing, contaminant retention, flood control etc.) that healthy land provides. My research program addresses the need to consider these land/water linkages to increase our understanding of how “healthy land=healthy water”. My students, colleagues and I focus on extremely damaged systems (e.g. mining impacted watershed near Sudbury, Canada) where sharp spatial gradients of disturbance exist. In these disturbed watersheds we are able to clearly identify how terrestrial ecosystem services operate and how they may be optimized to benefit damaged aquatic systems in the early, middle and late stages of recovery. For example, we showed how reforestation affects surface winds and lake stratification, metal retention in wetlands, and the role of terrestrial DOC as a nutrient subsidy to stimulate the entire food web (microbesfish). We have also used the latest molecular biology tools to isolate the unique microbial signature of terrestrial disturbances (fire, logging, mining and urbanization) to show how terrestrially derived dissolved organic matter can affect metabolism and reproduction of aquatic organisms exposed to sublethal levels of Cu. These results will help guide decision makers to set targets in their efforts to reduce air pollution. In restoration ecology there are often “surprises”, for example where a serious stressor may actually exhibit a beneficial role during some stages of recovery. Our earlier finding that smelter emissions of potentially toxic Se led to reduced bioaccumulation of Hg in fish across the Sudbury landscape is a good example (Belzile et al. 2006 CJFAS). For this grant my students will be preparing for similar discoveries as they examine whether alien invasive forest insects (e.g. gypsy moth) may actually speed the formation of healthy forest soils to protect downstream aquatic systems. They will also try to discover whether various bioassessment techniques, including measures of microbial community function, can assess the effectiveness of “green treatment options” in urban /industrial watersheds. Finally they will try to identify the effects of exposure to sublethal levels of metals on fish in the final stages of system recovery, using analysis of fish gut microbiomes.