Understanding the Impact of Chemical Pollutants on Freshwater Ecosystem Services

该项目解决了化学品监管和环境保护方面的一个关键挑战：确保社会从化学品中受益，同时保护生态系统免受其不利影响。淡水生态系统为人类提供多种利益（即生态系统服务），但它们所依赖的生物多样性正受到威胁。在国际上，淡水物种比陆地或海洋物种灭绝的速度更快，污染是一个主要威胁。用于保护淡水生态系统免受化学污染物不利影响的环境质量标准（EQSs）使用的是单物种毒性试验产生的毒性数据。EQS是由最敏感的物种驱动的，并没有反映出它们在生态系统过程中作用的重要性，这可能对生态系统的功能产生巨大影响。因此，环境质量、生物多样性、生态系统功能和生态系统之间的联系是不确定的。该项目提供了一种新的方法来审查模范化学污染物对不同生态系统服务产生影响的水平。这将需要识别主要分类群体（或服务提供单位）中存在的相关特征。部分新颖之处在于让利益相关者确定对他们重要的关键生态系统服务（如水净化或娱乐相关）。我们的愿景是，学生可以开发新的方法来制定化学标准，以确定保护不同有价值的生态系统服务的浓度水平。该学生将使用现有的前瞻性毒性数据和回顾性环境监测数据来评估ES供应商的相对敏感性，并开发基于ES的eqs。学生有机会影响英国未来的化学品标准制定，并可能影响全球化学品管理。

This project addresses a key challenge in chemicals regulation and environmental protection: ensuring that society can benefit from chemicals, whilst protecting ecosystems from their adverse impacts. Freshwater ecosystems provide multiple benefits to people (i.e. ecosystem services, ES), but the biodiversity on which they depend is under threat. Internationally, freshwater species are going extinct more rapidly than terrestrial or marine species and pollution is a major threat. Environmental Quality Standards (EQSs) used to protect freshwater ecosystems from the adverse impacts of chemical pollutants, use toxicity data generated from single-species toxicity tests. The EQS is driven by the most sensitive species and does not reflect the importance of their role in ecosystem processes, which can have dramatic impacts on how ecosystems function. The links between EQSs, biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and hence ES are therefore uncertain. This project offers a novel approach to review exemplar chemical pollutants with respect to levels which would have impacts on different ecosystem services. This will require identifying relevant traits present in major taxonomic groups (or service providing units). Part of the novelty is involving stakeholders to identify key ecosystem services, which are important to them (such as water purification or recreation related). The vision is that the student could develop new approaches to chemical standard setting that would identify concentration levels protective of different valuable ecosystem services. The student will use existing prospective toxicity data and retrospective environmental monitoring data to assess the relative sensitivity of ES providers and develop ES-based EQSs. The student has the opportunity to influence future chemical standard setting in the UK and potentially influence the worldwide management of chemicals.