Objective
A group of five teams, three from INTAS and two from Ukraine, has been brought together to study by innovative techniques the problems of cultural eutrophication and industrial pollution of Sevastopol Bay. Central to the investigation will be the measurement of bioenergetic activity by heat flux, relying on the principle in irreversible thermodynamics that the Gibbs energy of growth is dissipated as heat. This requires the combined use of calorimetry and assays of biomass. For the latter, the usual methods will be supplemented by advanced techniques of flow cytometry and dielectric spectroscopy. Because anthropogenic alterations of the sea cause changes in the amount of dissolved oxygen with consequent stress to organisms, oxygen consumption will be measured, which will also allow calculation of the calorimetric-respirometric ratio for analysis of the intensity of anaerobic processes in environmental stress.
For the battery of advanced techniques to be applicable to the problem of pollution, it is first necessary to define the ecosystem. The Sevastopol teams will build upon their excellent knowledge of the local coastal waters by a comparative survey of polluted and "clean" waters over a 12-month period. The team at the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas will study certain types of organism to find appropriate biological indicators (biomarkers). They have particular expertise in fish development which is a sensitive indicator of toxicity; the benthic meiofauna which is exposed to high pollutant concentrations close to the bottom; and the pelagic phytoplankton. They will apply flow and batch calorimetry to the biomarkers as well as measuring oxygen consumption and the increase in antioxidants to combat oxidative stress. The second group in the Marine Hydrophysical Institute will provide all the data on levels of heavy metal, fertilizer and organic solvents in the sea to match with the biological and bioenergetic data for the biomarkers. The Dublin group will introduce to the programme their expertise in studies at the sediment-water interface.
While the principle activity of the Sevastopol groups in the first year will be to establish the response of the biomarkers to pollutants in the face of seasonal changes, gradually the emphasis will switch to laboratory models, as exemplified by the barnacle system in Genova. This group will also act to validate the use of heat flux to give bioenergetic activity as the central indicator of pollution, the major objective of the research.
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Programme(s)
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Coordinator
SY23 3DA Aberystwyth
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.