Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Over 65% of the human population lives within 100 km of coastal zones, and this fraction is expected to increase greatly during the 21st century. Coastal zones provide habitat, resources and services essential to human communities worldwide. At the national level, about one-third of Canada's GDP is directly or indirectly related to coastal zone activities. Increasing population size and intensifying industrial activities contribute to alter the health of coastal ecosystems, as do natural factors such as climatic variability. Resulting declines in water quality and productivity of renewable resources are expected to have negative impacts on the wealth of human societies, both globally and nationally. This program aims at quantifying the respective effects of humans and natural factors on the health of coastal ecosystems. Although both anthropogenic and human processes affect diverse ecosystems, relatively little is known of how these contrasting processes interact to impact coastal ecosystem health and functioning, particularly with respect to biogeochemical cycles and their impacts on water quality. Consequently, this program focuses on the controls of landscape patterns of nitrogen cycling and water quality in response to modern and historical land use, along a gradient of freshwater (upstream lakes and rivers) to marine habitats (downstream estuaries and coastal zones). The main objective of this program is to identify the unique effects of humans and climatic variability on algal growth, toxicity, and ecosystem nitrogen fluxes (fixation, denitrification) in coastal ecosystems. It will contribute to develop better land management practices that maintain ecosystem health while at the same time meet Society's needs for natural resources.