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: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=764565
• 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。我们对长期环境变化的认识，往往是根据湖泊沉积物记录中的物理、化学和生物指标来推断的。特别重要的是要了解环境条件和养分供应方面的限制因素，这些因素影响许多水生物种的生存阈值和分布。淡水服务本身也受到总体生产的影响，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，由于环境压力而造成的生境和水供应的变化正成为市政服务，如淡水供应的强烈关切。通过古湖泊学方法，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固有挑战是对生态系统如何运作的基本了解。如果不了解自然变化的轨迹，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数百年人类干预的影响。因此，这项研究计划将侧重于对市政服务的重要性，以校准保护目标和项目未来对环境变化的反应的水生系统的变化轨迹的知识。为了实现提高我们预测环境变化对生态系统管理、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，这些目标有助于积累知识，用于对气候变暖下的生产力进行推断和解释;（1）量化生物指标与环境条件中集水区介导的梯度之间的关系，（2）重建易受环境压力影响的生态系统的生产力，（3）将古气候重建的生产力和气候知识应用于预测、保护和城市规划。这项研究计划是新颖和创新的，因为它将增加使用古气候指标来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。我专门调整短期目标的项目，这将增加我们的知识，从水生生物指标产生的推论，但也适用于这种知识的“古政策”的方法，重点关注领域的利益/关注的决策者在北极的背景下，以及在当地的新斯科舍省。