COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Opening Pandora's Bbox with a Biotic Key: Can Cyanobacterial Blooms in Nutrient-Poor Lakes Accelerate Eutrophication?

该奖项是根据2009年《美国复苏和再投资法案》(公法111-5)资助的。淡水生态系统提供对人类福祉至关重要的生态服务，如饮用水、食物资源和废水处理。如果人类活动及其影响超过系统吸收或缓冲这些服务的能力，这些系统就容易受到这些服务的干扰。人们早就知道，淡水系统的营养负荷过高会导致水质下降，滋生滋生藻类。尚未被理解的是生物制剂的作用。初步结果表明，它们可以通过促进沉积物中积累的营养物质的释放，加速从营养贫乏的湖泊向富营养化湖泊的转变。该奖项将探索棘球藻在加速富营养化方面所起的作用。这项研究将探索棘球藻如何影响氮和磷的有效性以及整个湖泊的新陈代谢。通过野外观察、实验室和野外实验、古生态学、建模和比较研究，PIS将阐明地球毛藻水华作为富营养化驱动因素的作用。鉴于棘球藻类最近扩展到东北地区的湖泊，这项研究是及时的，并将立即应用于资源管理。该项目确定了一些活动(学生培训、湖泊管理协会)，这些活动将扩大研究的影响。私营部门是国际湖泊网络--全球湖泊生态网络的积极参与者，从而确保成果在全球范围内迅速传播。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Freshwater ecosystems provide vital ecological services important to human well being such as drinking water, food resources, and waste water treatment. These systems are vulnerable to disruption of these services if human activities and their impacts exceed the capacity of the system to absorb or buffer them. It has been long known that excessive nutrient loads to freshwater systems can result in a reduction in water quality and blooms in nuisance algae. What has not been understood is the role of biological agents. Initial results indicate that they can accelerate this shift from a nutrient poor lake to a eutrophic lake by facilitating the release of accumulated nutrients from the sediments. This award will explore the role that Gloeotrichia echinulata plays in accelerating eutrophication. The research will explore how G. echinulata affects both nitrogen and phosphorus availability as well as whole lake metabolism. Through field observations, laboratory and field experiments, paleoecology, modeling and comparative studies, the PIs will elucidate the role of Gloeotrichia blooms as a driver of eutrophication. The research is timely and will have immediate resource management application, given the recent expansion of G. echinulata into lakes across the Northeast. The project identified a number of activities (student training, lake management associations) which will lead to broadened impacts of the research. The PIs are active participants in the international lakes network, Global Lakes Ecological Network, thus ensuring the results will be rapidly disseminated on a global scale.