Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

Water management and the adverse impacts of intensive agriculture and global warming on water quantity and water quality are major environmental issues of our decade. Southern Alberta, a semi-arid region with extensive lifestock operations (feedlots) and irrigation-dependent crop production is an area where water issues are at the forefront of public debate. There are urgent requests from government and citizen groups for scientists to provide data for use in Risk assessments and diagnostic tools to evaluate water quality.     Our group is actively involved in research aimed at understanding the complex interactions between multiple anthropogenic stressors potentially impacting water quality, including chemical pollutants such as fertilizers, pesticides and pharmaceuticals, fluctuating water levels due to irrigation withdrawals from rivers, temperature increases due to climate change and changes in populations of aquatic species.     The requested microplate reader will increase the capacity of our respective laboratories to analyse environmental samples of water, sediments, animal tissue and plasma, and microorganisms. The microplate reader will be used for a broad range of analyses relevant to ecotoxicology (Hontela), cell biology and microbiology (Selinger), and aquatic ecology (Rasmussen), to measure a variety of analytes, including nutrients (phosphorus, nitrogen), oxidative stress markers (catalase, GpX, GSH) and metabolic indicators (LDH, phytase, glycogen). The reader will enable us to reduce the volumes of chemicals used for the analyses, improve the sensitivity and precision of the analyses and reduce research expenses.