Floc Microbial Fe Redox Cycling and Implications for Trace Elements in Freshwater Environments

通过为依赖用水的资源部门（即采矿业）制定更有效的监测方案和更可持续的废物管理战略，改善我们淡水资源的水质，对加拿大持续的社会经济繁荣和健康至关重要。要满足这一关键需求，就需要对影响淡水系统中污染物行为的复杂过程有更深入的了解。特别是，在水生系统中自然存在的细菌的活性在这些过程中很重要，但仍然知之甚少。识别这些环境细菌在污染物行为中的作用为更好地管理和减轻污染系统提供了新的机会。拟议的研究通过创新的目标直接解决了对更好理解的需要，这些目标将新确定环境微生物群落、矿物相和环境条件之间的关键相互作用，这些相互作用驱动水体中污染物的封存-动员。它将具体调查一个研究较少的水生系统隔室，絮凝体（水生系统中广泛存在的悬浮微生物-矿物聚集体），该研究小组最近表明，它对污染物行为至关重要。它将产生对絮团微生物如何协调生物矿物形成的变革性理解，并确定絮团污染物封存的含义。研究结果将直接应用于受污染的水域，为制定更智能的生物管理、缓解和监测战略提供新的见解。培养5名具有前沿、多学科技术的研究生高素质人才。这些新的受训人员直接解决了目前在对加拿大持续的经济、环境和社会政治成功至关重要的领域出现的高技能工人短缺问题：采矿、环境咨询和政府环境监测和管理部门。

Improving water quality of our freshwater resources through development of more effective monitoring programs and more sustainable waste management strategies for resource sectors reliant on water use, i.e. the mining industry, is vital to Canada's continued socio-economic prosperity and health. Meeting this critical need requires greater understanding of the complex processes affecting contaminant behaviour in freshwater systems. In particular, the activity of bacteria naturally occurring in aquatic systems is well appreciated to be important in these processes but remains poorly understood. Identification of these environmental bacterial roles in contaminant behaviour offers new opportunities for better management and mitigation of contaminated systems. The proposed research directly addresses the need for greater understanding through innovative objectives that will newly identify key interactions among environmental microbial communities, mineral phases and environmental conditions that drive contaminant sequestration - mobilization in water bodies. It will specifically investigate a poorly studied aquatic system compartment, floc, (suspended microbe-mineral aggregates widespread in aquatic systems), which has recently been shown by the investigator's group to be vitally important to contaminant behaviour. It will generate transformative understanding of how floc microorganisms orchestrate biomineral formation and identify the implications for floc contaminant sequestration. Results will have direct application to contaminated waters, offering new insight for the development of smarter biological strategies for management, mitigation and monitoring. It will train 5 post-graduate highly qualified personnel in leading edge, multidisciplinary techniques. These new trainees directly address the shortage of highly skilled workers currently occurring in areas of vital importance to Canada's continued economic, environmental and socio-political success: mining, environmental consulting and government environmental monitoring and regulatory sectors.