Projets de recherche
Porteur
Ana Rita Silva
Session
Co-porteur(s)
Nazaret González-Alcaraz; Marija Prodana, Patrícia V. Silva, Susana Loureiro
Titre
TERRA - Climate change impacTs in EstaRRejA region
Résumé
Although great efforts have been made over the last years, climate change continues to impact our planet. According to IPCC predictions, atmospheric CO2 levels and mean temperature are expected to continue rising jointly with the frequency/intensity/duration of extreme weather events (e.g., droughts and floods). The impact of climate change may be exacerbated in metal(loid)-contaminated areas, such as the Estarreja municipality, where ecosystems have been under stress for decades. TERRA aims to understand the effects of climate change alterations on the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, using contaminated soils from Estarreja. For that, extreme climate events/predicted climate change scenarios (including changes in combined climate factors according to IPCC) will be simulated to evaluate their effects on the ecotoxicity in terrestrial and aquatic inhabitants. Moreover, soil/water properties, e.g. pH, metal(loid) content, soil organic carbon, will be evaluated to establish the link between soil/water properties and effects under changing climate factors. Considering that extreme climate events have been reported in the last years in Portugal, the project intends to understand the dynamics behind contamination in this region after these events, by evaluating contamination level in Estarreja region five years later (by comparing with previous works). TERRA will provide crucial data for Portugal and worldwide regarding the consequences of climate changes in contaminated areas. The present project will also promote an easy and active communication with the society, with the final aim of increasing awareness about climate change and its environmental impacts.
Type
Projet OHMs
OHM(s) concerné(s)
- OHM Estarreja
Disciplines
Biologie, Climatologie, Écologie, Géologie
Porteur
Ana Rita
Silva
Rita Silva (PhD) is a biologist specialized in environmental toxicology. She obtained her degree in Biology and Geology (Univ. Aveiro (UAVR), 2009) and she has extensive experience in soil ecotoxicology (MSc in Applied Biology, UAVR, 2011) and aquatic ecotoxicology (PhD in Biology and Ecology of Global Changes, UAVR, 2016). She has worked in different international R&D projects, being research fellow in NanoFARM (ERA Net SIINN) and NanoFASE (H2020) projects, where the effects of nanoparticles were assessed in aquatic and terrestrial mesocosms. In parallel, she has been involved in the R&D project WE-NEED (Water JPI), related to the assessment of the quality of groundwater. Her research interests are mainly focused on terrestrial ecotoxicology (effect on soil invertebrates and plants), climate changes and abiotic/biotic factors interactions and its effects. Currently, she is a researcher at Dept. Biology & CESAM (UAVR) in the context of the R&D project METOXCLIM (FEDER via COMPETE 2020 and National Portuguese Funding FCT), where the goal is to assess how the toxicity and functionality of metal-contaminated soils may be affected by climate change factors. She also participates in the R&D project MICROCLIM (CNRS/INEE via OHMi), where the aim was to assess how microbial populations of Estarreja metal contaminated agricultural soils may be affected by forecasted climate change scenarios. (Co)author of 15 SCI papers (4 as first author) and 30 communications to (inter)national conferences. She has been involved in different outreach activities by disseminating scientific knowledge for (un)specialized audiences (e.g. courses at UAVR, schools visits, science fairs).
Participants
Susana
Loureiro
Susana Loureiro is an Assistant Professor with Habilitation at the University of Aveiro. She is graduated in Biology (1997) and MSc in Ecology (2000) by University of Coimbra. She obtained her PhD in 2004 on the assessment of contaminated soils, at University of Aveiro (UAVR). In 2017, she obtained her Habilitation in Biology (UAVR). Her research activities are mainly focused on the effect of combined stressors or chemical mixtures both in environmental or human models. She is also interested on the impact of emergent chemicals as a source of exposure to organisms and humans. Within these thematic she has succeeded on several National funding applications as PI that are boundary areas of research with agricultural sciences: in 2007 the project AGROMIX, on soil mixture toxicity; 2010, CLIMAFUN on the combined effects of abiotic factors and chemicals in soils. Additionally, she has built an international, multidisciplinary network which enabled her to participate in EU FP7 NanoFATE...
