Understanding the past to predict the future: Paleolimnology for management and planning of freshwater resources in a warming climate

了解过去以预测未来：气候变暖下淡水资源管理和规划的古湖泊学

• 批准号: RGPIN-2021-02423
• 负责人: Medeiros, Andrew
• 金额: $ 2.19万
• 依托单位: Dalhousie University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2021-01-01 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=741969
• 关键词: Understanding; past; predict; future; Paleolimnology

Freshwater ecosystems are highly sensitive to environmental stress and variability in climate. Our knowledge of environmental change over long timescales is often predicated by inferences from physical, chemical, and biological proxies in lake sediment records. It is particularly important to understand constraints in both environmental conditions and nutrient availability, factors that influence the survival threshold and distribution of many aquatic species. Freshwater services are also inherently influenced by overall production, therefore use of these resources is also affected by changes in climate and productivity. As such, changes in habitat and water availability due to environmental stress are becoming strong concerns for municipal services, such as the provisioning of freshwater. With paleolimnological methods, lakes can serve as storybooks of the past, and the information contained can be used to calibrate our projections for the future. An inherent challenge for natural resource management is baseline knowledge of how ecosystems operate. Without knowledge of the natural trajectory of change, it is difficult to establish the goalposts for conservation. Likewise, monitoring information is often lacking, or not possible to obtain, with traditional surveys because ecosystems have already been influenced by centuries of human intervention. Thus, this research program will focus on  knowledge of the trajectory of change in aquatic systems of importance for municipal services to calibrate conservation goals and project future responses to environmental change. In order to address the long-term objective of improving our ability to project the influences of environmental change for ecosystem management, conservation, and planning, three primary short-term objectives are aligned over the next 5 years that contribute to knowledge that will be used to formulate inferences and interpretations of productivity in a warming climate; (1) Quantification of relationships between biological indicators and catchment-mediated gradients in environmental condition, (2) reconstruction of productivity from ecosystems prone to environmental stress, and (3) application of knowledge from paleo-climate reconstructions of productivity and climate for forecasting, conservation, and municipal planning. This research program is novel and innovative as it will both increase confidence for the use of paleo-climate indicators to quantify past environment, as well as demonstrate the potential for paleolimnology in management and planning of freshwater resources. I specifically align the short-term objectives to projects that will both increase our knowledge of inferences generated from aquatic bioindictors, but also apply this knowledge in a 'Paleo to Policy' approach focusing on areas of interest/concern for decision-makers in both the Arctic context as well as locally in Nova Scotia.

淡水生态系统对环境压力和气候变化高度敏感。我们对环境变化在长时间尺度上的知识通常是通过湖泊沉积物记录中的物理、化学和生物替代品的推断来预测的。尤其重要的是要了解环境条件和养分可获得性方面的限制，这是影响许多水生物种生存阈值和分布的因素。淡水服务本身也受到总产量的影响，因此，这些资源的使用也受到气候和生产力变化的影响。因此，由于环境压力而导致的栖息地和水供应的变化正成为市政服务的强烈关切，例如淡水的供应。有了古湖泊学方法，湖泊可以作为过去的故事书，其中包含的信息可以用来校准我们对未来的预测。自然资源管理的一个内在挑战是对生态系统如何运行的基线知识。如果不了解变化的自然轨迹，就很难建立保护的目标。同样，传统调查往往缺乏或无法获得监测信息，因为生态系统已经受到几个世纪以来人类干预的影响。因此，这项研究计划将侧重于了解水生系统的变化轨迹，这对市政服务具有重要意义，以校准保护目标并预测未来对环境变化的反应。为了解决提高我们预测环境变化对生态系统管理、生态保护和规划的影响的能力这一长期目标，在未来5年内调整了三个主要的短期目标，这三个主要短期目标将有助于提供知识，这些知识将被用于在气候变暖的情况下制定生产力的推断和解释；(1)量化生物指标和流域调节的环境条件梯度之间的关系，(2)从容易受到环境压力的生态系统重建生产力，以及(3)应用生产力和气候的古气候重建的知识，用于预测、保护和市政规划。这一研究计划是新颖和创新的，因为它将增加使用古气候指标量化过去环境的信心，并展示古湖沼学在淡水资源管理和规划中的潜力。我特别将短期目标与项目保持一致，这些项目不仅将增加我们对水生生物指标产生的推论的知识，而且还将这种知识应用于专注于决策者感兴趣/关注的领域的旧政策方法，无论是在北极背景下还是在新斯科舍省当地。