Strategies to manage toxic cyanobacetrial blooms in lakes: remote sensing, modelling and cost benefit analysis

蓝藻（蓝绿藻）通常在英国静止和缓慢流动的淡水中产生大量种群。它们可能产生毒素，通过摄入和皮肤接触对人类和动物构成健康风险。并非所有的蓝藻繁殖都会产生毒素，毒素的存在只能通过收集样本并将其带到实验室来确认。从公共卫生的角度来看，监测在很大程度上是被动的，而不是主动的，而且几乎没有预警能力。然而，遥感技术最近的发展显示出在快速（和可靠）检测水华方面有希望。该提案旨在制定和评估一种基于遥感（RS）的方法，以便在风险评估框架内提供有毒蓝藻发展的早期预警，以保护健康。（RS）程序的校准将在英国2个资源丰富的淡水水域进行实际的蓝藻毒素分析，这些水域每年都有藻华的历史。该提案以现有的建模工作为基础，开发一种危害评估工具，以确定可能因生产有毒蓝藻而构成危害的可能水体，并模拟气候变化对湖泊中潜在有毒蓝藻生产的影响。一个关键问题涉及到了解导致蓝藻毒素产生的环境因素，这在提案中得到了解决。讨论了直接和间接接触毒素对人类健康造成的风险，并对监测有毒水华进行了成本效益分析。

Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) commonly produce mass populations in UK still- and slow-moving freshwaters. They may generate toxins which present health risks to humans and animals via ingestion and skin contact. Not all cyanobacterial blooms produce toxins, and the presence of toxins can only be confirmed by collecting samples and taking them to the laboratory. From a public health perspective monitoring has been largely reactionary and not proactive and little early warning capability exists However, recent developments in remote sensing techniques have shown promise in the rapid (and reliable) detection of blooms. This proposal is designed to develop and evaluate an approach based on remote sensing (RS) to providing early warning of toxic cyanobacterial development to protect health within a risk assessment framework. Calibration of the (RS) procedure would be carried out using actual cyanotoxin analysis at 2 high-resource UK freshwaters with a history of annual bloom production. The proposal builds on existing modelling work to develop a hazard assessment tool to identify likely water bodies that may pose a hazard from the production toxic cyanobacteria and model the influence of climate change on potentially toxic cyanobacteria production in lakes. A critical question relates to understanding the environmental factors leading to cyanotoxin production and this is addressed within the proposal. The human health risk from direct and indirect exposure to the toxins is addressed along with cost-benefit analysis of monitoring for toxic blooms.