Tracking pollutants as continua throughout the Thames drainage basin

连续跟踪整个泰晤士流域的污染物

基本信息

批准号：
NE/X010805/1
负责人：
Gareth Garmon Roberts
金额：
$ 10.27万
依托单位：
Imperial College London
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：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FX010805%2F1
关键词：
Tracking pollutants continua throughout Thames

项目摘要

The state of UK river waters and their chemical contamination is of growing concern. Pesticides, pharmaceuticals, illegal drugs, plastic-related chemicals, and personal care products are now found throughout UK rivers. At toxic concentrations they have serious adverse impacts on the health of animals and plants that rely on rivers and on humans that use them. A crucial step towards improving the quality of our waterways is to identify the locations of toxic concentrations of chemicals and where they came from. A big challenge is developing the means (data and theory) to quantify chemical concentrations throughout entire drainage basins, which can have point and widespread sources of pollutants. Additionally, identifying sources of pollutants is complicated by the mixing and dispersal of chemicals as they move downstream. To address these challenges, we will combine new, large, inventories of spot measurements of contaminants of emerging concern with newly developed computational models that will allow us to generate continuous predictions of chemical concentrations. This combination of state-of-the-art environmental monitoring data and computational techniques will allow us, for the first time, to generate continuous predictions of element concentrations throughout entire basins. Such continuous predictions will provide the knowledge necessary to identify all river reaches (not just those upstream of sample sites) with toxic chemical concentrations. They will be used to identify sources of pollutants, especially diffuse sources (e.g. agricultural runoff), which are currently very difficult to identify with existing monitoring techniques. In this project we will focus on the River Thames and its tributaries where the concentrations of >100 contaminants of emerging concern (CEC) have recently been measured by academics and the Environment Agency. The Thames drains the UK's most populous drainage basin and is a conduit for a large range of natural and man-made chemical that are inserted into its drainage network. The new maps of chemical concentrations will identify localities along rivers where urgent remediation is required, and, importantly, identify point (e.g. from waste water treatment plants) and wide-spread (e.g. pesticides from agriculture) sources of pollutants. In this proof-of-concept study, we will show how modern environmental monitoring techniques can be combined with cutting-edge computational techniques to generate transferable tools to quantify concentrations of diverse chemicals throughout drainage basin. The framework developed in this study will be used in future application of advanced techniques for continuous monitoring of drainage basins in the UK and beyond.

英国河水状况及其化学污染日益引起人们的关注。英国河流中现在到处可见农药、药品、非法药物、塑料相关化学品和个人护理产品。当达到有毒浓度时，它们会对依赖河流的动植物以及使用河流的人类的健康产生严重的不利影响。提高水道质量的关键一步是确定化学品有毒浓度的位置及其来源。一个巨大的挑战是开发方法（数据和理论）来量化整个流域的化学浓度，这些流域可能有点状和广泛的污染物源。此外，由于化学品在向下游移动时会混合和扩散，因此污染物来源的识别变得更加复杂。为了应对这些挑战，我们将把新出现的污染物的大量现场测量清单与新开发的计算模型相结合，使我们能够对化学浓度进行连续预测。最先进的环境监测数据和计算技术的结合将使我们第一次能够对整个流域的元素浓度进行连续预测。这种连续的预测将提供识别所有河流河段（不仅仅是采样点上游）有毒化学物质浓度所需的知识。它们将用于识别污染物的来源，特别是扩散源（例如农业径流），目前现有的监测技术很难识别污染物的来源。在这个项目中，我们将重点关注泰晤士河及其支流，学术界和环境局最近测量了超过 100 种新出现的污染物 (CEC) 的浓度。泰晤士河流淌着英国人口最多的流域，也是大量天然和人造化学品进入其排水网络的管道。新的化学浓度地图将确定河流沿岸需要紧急修复的地点，更重要的是，确定污染物的点源（例如来自废水处理厂）和广泛分布的源（例如来自农业的杀虫剂）。在这项概念验证研究中，我们将展示如何将现代环境监测技术与尖端计算技术相结合，生成可转移的工具来量化整个流域内不同化学物质的浓度。本研究开发的框架将用于未来应用先进技术，对英国及其他地区的流域进行连续监测。