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

蓝藻(蓝藻)通常在英国静止和缓慢移动的淡水中产生大量种群。它们可能会产生毒素，通过摄入和皮肤接触对人类和动物的健康构成威胁。并不是所有的蓝藻水华都会产生毒素，只有收集样本并将其带到实验室才能确认是否存在毒素。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，早期预警能力很少。然而，遥感技术的最新发展在快速(和可靠)探测水华方面显示出希望。这项建议旨在开发和评估一种基于遥感(RS)的方法，以提供有毒蓝藻发展的早期预警，以在风险评估框架内保护健康。(RS)程序的校准将在2个具有年度水华生产历史的高资源英国淡水中使用实际氰化毒素分析进行。该提案建立在现有建模工作的基础上，以开发一种危险评估工具，以确定生产有毒蓝藻可能构成危害的可能水体，并模拟气候变化对湖泊潜在有毒蓝藻生产的影响。一个关键的问题涉及了解导致氰化毒素生产的环境因素，这一问题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的风险，以及监测有毒水华的成本效益分析。

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.