CNH2-L: Spoiling fish as food: feedbacks between ecosystem and human responses to harmful algal blooms

在世界各地，蓝藻产生的有害藻华（cyanHABs）的数量，持续时间和强度的增加威胁着人类和生态系统。这些水华产生的毒素可能会影响依赖渔业获得营养和生计的社区，特别是通过人类福祉与水生生态系统动态之间的反馈作用，这种反馈作用知之甚少。研究人员将与当地合作者进行综合的社会环境研究，通过分析氰基有害生物如何影响鱼类、渔民和鱼类消费者来填补这一知识空白。该项目将产生与许多面临环境变化的食品系统相关的见解。 该项目由一名早期职业调查员领导，将与当地合作伙伴密切合作开展。它将通过为研究生和本科生以及博士后研究员提供培训机会，并为K-12学生开发互动式博物馆展览，发展社会环境研究能力，人类对环境退化的行为反应所产生的复杂反馈将在塑造社会环境系统方面发挥越来越重要的作用。该项目的重点是利用一个大湖的社会环境系统进行这种反馈，在这个大湖中，氰基有害生物困扰着世界上最大的湖泊渔业及其所支持的3 000万人。人为的营养负荷正在驱动氰有害生物，氰有害生物产生一种毒素，在鱼类中积累的水平远远超过安全食用的指导方针。通过改变食物网的基础，氰基有害生物还可能降低鱼类的营养质量。预计渔民、消费者和市场将对氰基有害生物意识的提高作出反应，并可能对鱼类在有益和有害化合物之间的平衡方面的差异作出复杂的反应。反过来，消费者和市场的反应可能会反馈到水生食物网、氰有害生物的时空动态以及人类健康和福祉的差异。该项目将分析cyanoHABs如何影响整个食物网中鱼类的毒素和omega-3脂肪酸;评估市场，渔民和消费者对cyanoHABs的反应;并评估人类活动如何驱动cyanoHABs的时空变化。通过将这些发现整合到一个动态模型中，研究人员将测试氰基有害生物如何改变资源依赖人群中人类健康风险的分布，并为评估合理的政策杠杆提供一个框架。通过将氰藻酸盐动态与人类营养和健康风险的社会经济差异联系起来，他们将扩大社会环境系统理论，以解决自然资源开发对人类健康和公平的影响。记录鱼类中氰藻酸盐毒素的积累和人类对这一新出现的威胁的反应，将指导环境和公共卫生机构开发管理人类健康和福祉风险的工具。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

Around the world, increases in the number, duration, and intensity of cyanobacteria-producing harmful algal blooms (cyanoHABs) threaten both people and ecosystems. Toxins produced by these blooms are likely to impact communities that rely on fisheries for nutrition and livelihoods, particularly through poorly-understood feedbacks between human well-being and aquatic ecosystem dynamics. The investigators will conduct integrated socioenvironmental research with local collaborators to will fill this knowledge gap by analyzing how cyanoHABs affect fish, fishers, and fish consumers. The project will generate insights that will be relevant to many food systems facing environmental change. The project is led by an early career investigator and will be conducted in close collaboration with local partners. It will develop socio-environmental research capacity by supporting trainee opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students, as well as a postdoctoral researcher, and developing interactive museum exhibits for K-12 students.Complex feedbacks arising from human behavioral responses to environmental degradation will play an increasingly pivotal role in shaping socio-environmental systems. This project focuses on such feedbacks using the socio-environmental system of a large lake where cyanoHABs are besetting the world’s largest lake fishery and the 30 million people it supports. Anthropogenic nutrient loading is driving cyanoHABs, which produce a toxin that accumulates in fish at levels far exceeding guidelines for safe consumption. By altering the base of the food web, cyanoHABs may also reduce the nutritional quality of fish. Fishers, consumers, and markets are expected to respond to growing awareness of cyanoHABs and may also show complex responses to differences among fish species in the balance between beneficial and harmful compounds. In turn, consumer and market responses are likely to feed back upon the aquatic food web, spatiotemporal dynamics of cyanoHABs, and disparities in human health and wellbeing. This project will analyze how cyanoHABs affect toxins and omega-3 fatty acids in fish from across the food web; evaluate market, fisher, and consumer responses to cyanoHABs; and assess how human activities drive spatiotemporal variation in cyanoHABs. By integrating these findings within a dynamic model, the investigators will test how cyanoHABs alter the distribution of human health risks across resource-dependent populations and provide a framework for evaluating plausible policy levers. By connecting cyanoHAB dynamics with human nutrition and socioeconomic disparities in health risks, they will expand socio-environmental systems theory to address outcomes of natural resource exploitation for human health and equity. Documenting both the accumulation of cyanoHAB toxins in fish and human responses to this emerging threat will guide development of tools for environmental and public health agencies to manage risks to human health and wellbeing.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.