Quantifying the combined nutrient enrichment, pathogenic, and ecotoxicological impacts of livestock farming on UK rivers

量化畜牧业对英国河流的综合营养富集、致病和生态毒理学影响

• 批准号: NE/X015807/1
• 负责人: Andrew Binley
• 金额: $ 18.83万
• 依托单位: Lancaster University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FX015807%2F1
• 关键词: Quantifying; combined; nutrient; enrichment; pathogenic; Quantifying; combined; nutrient; enrichment; pathogenic

Livestock farming is the dominant farming type and source of organic matter pollution in UK freshwaters, with over 9.65M cattle and 32.7M sheep on 10M hectares of grassland, representing 57% of all agricultural land in the UK. When organic matter from livestock excreta is flushed to waters it drives changes in their physical, chemical and ecological quality and function. These include changes to the turbidity (and therefore light penetration), conductivity, benthic substrate character and oxygen regimes of the receiving waterbody, the delivery of agrochemicals including anti-microbial (antibacterial, antifungal, antiparasitic and antihelminth agents) and hormone compounds, both natural and derived from veterinary pharmaceutical use, all of which are likely to drive ecotoxicological impacts in receiving waters. They also contain nutrient-rich dissolved and particulate organic matter likely to drive eutrophication impacts in freshwater ecosystems, while also presenting a significant challenge for waters abstracted for human consumption. Pathogens, including bacteria and viruses, add to this portfolio of stressors, presenting a persistent problem for recreational water use, fisheries and shellfisheries in livestock farming areas. These stressors are likely to be present in most livestock excreta, but the extent to which different production systems and manure handling practices remove or reduce their concentration prior to their transfer to freshwaters is poorly understood. Nor do we understand the impact of the environmental character of the receiving waterbody on these ecotoxicological and nutrient enrichment impacts and pathogen persistence. Climate change-induced increases in water temperature and alterations in flow regime may then accelerate biological processing of this material, while the increased frequency of rainfall events predicted for the UK may overwhelm on-farm storage capacity, confounding efforts to reduce livestock impacts on freshwaters. There is thus an urgent need to understand interactions between these stressors, environment and management in driving changes in UK freshwater quality.QUANTUM will address this substantial knowledge gap, allowing us to better understand livestock farming as a key driver of changing UK quality in the livestock-dominated catchments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and throughout the north and west of England. This new knowledge will help us create models that can better predict how UK freshwater quality functions in the presence of these multiple stressors, and how it is likely to change in future in response to climate change and mitigation efforts.We will achieve this by:1. Developing evidence on the composition of livestock excreta, how this varies according to manure handling and management, and their chemical and microbiological persistence in freshwaters, which will provide a new framework to define and contextualise pressures they exert on UK freshwaters.2. Exploring how different freshwater biota respond to this portfolio of stressors, allowing us to develop a predictive understanding of likely ecosystem responses to livestock management practices across the UK.3. Understanding how livestock excreta perturb the state of freshwater ecosystems, and how the multiple stressors in these fluxes interact with each other and environmental character, which is essential if we are to understand how these freshwater communities assemble, function and respond to changing livestock farming practices, under current, mitigated and climatically-altered conditions.4. Identifying the livestock production practices and management approaches likely to generate the lowest possible impacts on freshwater chemistry and ecosystems, which will provide critical underpinning for the developing policy and practice by our project partners, to minimise livestock farming impacts on UK freshwaters under ambient and changing climate.

牲畜种植是英国淡水中的主要农业类型和有机物污染的来源，在1000公顷的草原上，有超过965万头牛和3270万羊，占英国所有农业土地的57％。当牲畜排泄物的有机物被冲向水域时，它会驱动其物理，化学和生态质量和功能的变化。 These include changes to the turbidity (and therefore light penetration), conductivity, benthic substrate character and oxygen regimes of the receiving waterbody, the delivery of agrochemicals including anti-microbial (antibacterial, antifungal, antiparasitic and antihelminth agents) and hormone compounds, both natural and derived from veterinary pharmaceutical use, all of which are likely to drive ecotoxicological接收水的影响。它们还包含富含营养的溶解和颗粒物有机物，可能会促进淡水生态系统中的富营养化影响，同时对抽象的人类消费造成了重大挑战。病原体，包括细菌和病毒，增加了这种压力源的组合，在牲畜种植地区提出了持续的休闲用水，渔业和贝类的问题。这些压力源很可能存在于大多数牲畜排泄中，但是在转移到淡水之前，不同的生产系统和肥料处理实践的消除或减少了浓度的程度。我们也不了解接收水体的环境特征对这些生态毒理学和养分富集的影响以及病原体持久性的影响。气候变化引起的水温升高和流动状态的变化可能会加速该材料的生物学处理，而英国预测的降雨事件的增加可能会使农场储存能力不堪重负，从而使减少牲畜对淡水的影响感到困惑。因此，迫切需要了解这些压力源，环境和管理在推动英国淡水质量变化时之间的互动。Quantum将解决这一巨大的知识差距，从而使我们能够更好地理解牲畜种植，这是威尔士，苏格兰，苏格兰和北爱尔兰和整个英国北部和整个英国北部和西部的牲畜统治的英国质量变化的关键驱动力。这些新知识将有助于我们创建模型，以更好地预测这些多重压力源在存在的情况下英国淡水质量的功能，以及在响应气候变化和缓解工作的未来可能会发生变化。我们将通过以下方式实现这一目标。开发有关牲畜排泄物组成的证据，这如何根据肥料处理和管理以及它们在淡水中的化学和微生物持久性而变化，这将提供一个新的框架，以定义和上下文对他们在英国淡水中施加的压力。2。探索不同的淡水生物群落如何应对压力源的这种组合，从而使我们能够对可能生态系统对牲畜管理实践的反应进行预测性理解。3。了解牲畜排泄如何扰动淡水生态系统的状态，以及这些通量中的多重压力源如何相互作用和环境特征，如果我们要了解这些淡水群落如何组装，运作并响应畜牧业，这是至关重要的。确定可能产生对淡水化学和生态系统的最低影响的牲畜生产实践和管理方法，这将为我们的项目合作伙伴的发展政策和实践提供关键的基础，以最大程度地减少在环境和气候下对英国淡水的牲畜耕作影响。