Environmental Fate of Glyphosate After Japanese Knotweed Applications

日本结叶草（Fallopia japonica）是一种高度入侵的多年生灌木，严重降低了生物多样性

Japanese knotweed, Fallopia japonica, is a highly invasive, perennial shrub that severely reduces biodiversity and outcompetes native species across North America and Europe. Currently the only effective option available to treat knotweed involves the injection of the herbicide glyphosate into plant stems. According to government regulations herbicides cannot be used within ten metres of water bodies, however, stem injections of knotweed using glyphosate can occur up to one metre from the high water mark of the water body. The objective of this research project will be to determine the environmental fate of glyphosate from stem injection applications and whether there are damaging effects to the biodiversity and habitat of important salmon spawning areas in a coastal British Columbia stream. Treatments of knotweed stands at Anderson Creek are scheduled to occur in the fall of 2015. Ecotoxicological and analytical endpoints that will be measured at untreated sites and/or pre- and post-glyphosate stem injection treatment sites include two major analyses: 1) benthic macroinvertebrate diversity analysis will be conducted and compared between samples collected from the treatment site and at adjacent untreated knotweed sites (all organisms collected will be identified to the lowest reasonable taxonomic level); and, 2) analytical chemistry samples will collected from fish tissue, soil, sediment, plant (knotweed), and invertebrates to investigate the half-life and partitioning of glyphosate post-treatment into these environmental compartments, and comparisons to pre-glyphosate treatment samples and samples collected from locations where repeated applications of glyphosate are known to occur (e.g. BC Hydro managed lands) will also be performed.