NSF Award Abstract - #0327056

AWSFL008-DS3

Collaborative Research: Impacts of Anthropogenic Change on the Ecology of Human
Pathogens in a Eutrophying Estuary: The Neuse River Estuary, NC

Abstract

ABSTRACT

OCE 0327056 / OCE-0326811

Approximately 75% of people live in coastal watersheds, with coastal urbanization and agricultural and industrial development increasing at rapid rates. Accelerating nutrient- and pathogen-enriched wastewater discharge accompanying coastal development is putting unprecedented pressure on estuaries that receive and process the bulk of land-based runoff. Enhanced nutrient loading has led to increased primary productivity or eutrophication, the symptoms of which pose a significant threat to coastal resources and ecological health. This eutrophication leads to organic matter enrichment of affected waters. Most human pathogens in wastewater discharges are heterotrophs and may thrive under these enriched organic matter conditions. As a result, pathogen populations may increase under nutrient loading leading to eutrophication, as will human exposures and health effects.

In this project, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel and University of North Carolina at Charlotte will focus on understanding the relationships between nutrient loading in the Neuse River Estuary, growth and fate of microorganisms linked to infectious disease, and subsequent impacts on human health. The long-term goal is the creation of a computational model useful in estimating the effect of watershed protection policies on ecological and human health. While the research is not strictly focused on human health risk, it will use a conceptual framework derived from human health risk assessment, and data collected under that framework, to focus on more fundamental scientific research in a way that ensures optimal reduction of uncertainties in current understanding of the links described above. The research will focus on microorganisms that are (i) of great significance to human health, (ii) the subject of research expertise by the PIs, and (iii) representative of the more general class of infectious disease agents whose fate is governed by environmental conditions in estuaries. An Advisory Board of distinguished scientists will guide the entire project from the range of disciplines involved.

Intellectual Merit: This research will employ an interdisciplinary approach by bringing together investigators familiar with estuarine dynamics, pathogen ecology, and human health risk. The result will be a new research program in the Ecology of Infectious Disease at the participating institutions. A modeling framework will combine experimental and field information to examine underlying mechanisms, environmental controls, and trophic interactions in a well-characterized estuary experiencing advanced symptoms of eutrophication. The result will be enhanced interactions between experimentalists and modelers, ensuring that the two groups function as a single research unit. The research site, the Neuse River Estuary (NRE), is an important fisheries and recreational resource and key tributary of North Carolina's Pamlico Sound, the Nation's 2nd largest estuarine complex and the East Coast's most important fisheries nursery. Study of this system will provide a conceptual and computational framework for studying other estuarine systems in which the impacts of nutrient/organic matter concentrations on the diversity, growth, survival, and proliferation of a range of particle-associated and freely suspended bacterial human pathogens might be examined.

Broader Impacts: This research project will facilitate a collaborative State-University-Industry water quality monitoring and assessment infrastructure, fostering a synergistic research atmosphere. It will also develop a novel, fundamental process-level understanding of the hydrologic, nutritional and ecological controls of human pathogen dynamics in a representative and tractable shallow estuary impacted by human development, with direct applicability to policy analyses in such systems. The project will serve as a keystone for an. experiential learning program for advanced undergraduates at an existing field site, preparing science undergraduates for careers at the interface of fundamental and applied science. Graduate students at both the MSc and PhD levels will be involved in intensive molecular and. Classical oceanographic training as part of this project. High school students, educators, and the public at large will actively participate in field experience seminars, using streaming video and interactive web-based activities as part of this project.