Project Title: Study of Eco-toxicity Effects and Assessment Methods Based on In-Situ Tests

Project Type:  National Nature Science Foundation of China

Project No.20807034

Project Awardee: Wang Zaosheng

Project Abstract: With the rapid industrialization and urbanization, pollutants are consecutively introduced into aquatic ecosystems. The conventional ecological assessment methods have disadvantages of high uncertainty and low ecological relevancy, due to the dependence on laboratory toxicity tests and field surveys. This project is applying the in-situ eco-assessment approach to evaluate toxic responses and to screen sensitive endpoints of multi-organisms from different food-web cascade levels (such as Moina monogolica Daday、Lateolabrax japonicu、Bivalve Mussel、Grandidierella japonica) under a control environmental scenior when they are exposed to various combinations of contaminants in water and sediments in a developed in-situ testing chamber. Factors in influencing the in-situ toxic responses are investigated dynamically. Simultaneously, a statistical analysis-based comparison in toxic effects takes place for multi-organisms among the three assessment approaches, i.e. in situ toxicity testing, laboratory toxicity tests and field surveys. The statistical comparison serves as an approach in discriminating evidences for the disadvantages of conventional toxicity assessment methods, i.e. high uncertainty and low ecological relevancy. An approach of in-situ toxicity testing and evaluation is proposing to be established in this project. The in-situ approach will reduce the high uncertainty and low ecological relevancy caused by the conventional assessment methods, and will improve accuracy and relevancy of the weight-of-evidence decision-making process for field managers.

Period of Project: 2009.1-- 2011.12

Fund of Project: ￥170,000