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‘Climate is water’
Healthy rivers critical to global efforts to adapt to climate change, says new report.
21 July 2019
Artificial intelligence can provide critical insights into how complex mixtures of chemicals in rivers affect aquatic life – paving the way for better environmental protection.
A new approach, developed by researchers at the University of Birmingham, demonstrates how advanced artificial intelligence (AI) methods can help identify potentially harmful chemical substances in rivers by monitoring their effects on tiny water fleas (Daphnia).
The team worked with scientists at the Research Centre for Eco-Environmental Sciences (RCEES) in China, and the Hemholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Germany to analyse water samples from the Chaobai River system near Beijing.
This river system is receiving chemical pollutants from a number of different sources, including agricultural, domestic and industrial.
Professor John Colbourne is the director of the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Environmental Research and Justice and one of the senior authors on the paper.
He expressed optimism that, by building upon these early findings, such technology can one day be deployed to routinely monitor water for toxic substances that would otherwise be undetected.
‘There is a vast array of chemicals in the environment. Water safety cannot be assessed one substance at a time. Now we have the means to monitor the totality of chemicals in sampled water from the environment to uncover what unknown substances act together to produce toxicity to animals, including humans.’
PROFESSOR JOHN COLBOURNE
Director of the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Environmental Research and Justice
The results, published in Environmental Science and Technology, reveal that certain mixtures of chemicals can work together to affect important biological processes in aquatic organisms, which are measured by their genes.
The combinations of these chemicals create environmental hazards that are potentially greater than when chemicals are present individually.
The research team used water fleas (Daphnia) as test organisms in the study because these tiny crustaceans are highly sensitive to water quality changes and share many genes with other species, making them excellent indicators of potential environmental hazards.
‘Our innovative approach leverages Daphnia as the sentinel species to uncover potential toxic substances in the environment.
‘By using AI methods, we can identify which subsets of chemicals might be particularly harmful to aquatic life, even at low concentrations that wouldn’t normally raise concerns.’
DR XIAOJING LI
Lead author, University of Birmingham (UoB)
The findings could help improve environmental protection by identifying previously unknown chemical combinations that pose risks to aquatic life and enabling more comprehensive environmental monitoring.
The research could also support better-informed regulations for chemical discharge into waterways.
This research was funded by the Royal Society International Collaboration Award, the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, and the Natural Environmental Research Council Innovation People programme.
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