The introduction of the innovative team:
Studies on marine environmental physiology and toxicology --- MOE Group of
Excellence, 2010-2012, Leading PIs: Kunshan Gao, Kejian Wang
Marine environment is changing in response to theongoing global climate change and regional industrialactivities. Rise of surface seawater temperature, oceanacidification, sea level rise and enhanced solar UVradiation have been globally recognized, while seawaterpCO2, inorganic nitrogen, phosphorus and heavy metalsincrease, leading to eutrophication and pollutions. Underthese multiple stresses, economical and ecologicaldisasters arise, such as decreasing economic value ofaquacultural products, and increasing red and green tidesand human poisoning.
Awarded in 2009 by MOE, this Group of Excellence project is to explore the physiological andtoxicological impacts of the pollutants, while looking into their interactive effects with global andregional environmental changes. The expected findings will be to clarify synergistic, antagonistic effectsor neutral effects of these multiple environmental stressors, providing scientific evidence and technicalsupport for the coastal environmental management toward healthy marine ecosystems in the SouthChina Sea.
We will focus on the researches related to the environmental physiology of the marine organisms: tostudy the effects of eutrophication and ocean acidification on the physiological metabolism anddevelopment of marine phytoplankton, sessile algae and animal (fish and shellfish) larvaes; to analyzesynergistic or antagonistic effects of the multiple stressors; to interpret the response of key physiologicalprocesses (e.g., photosynthetic carbon fixation, calcification, respiration, nutrition, metabolism, growth and development) to the environmental changes and to reveal the involved molecular mechanisms.
Also, we will study the ecotoxicology in marine environment: the study will be concerned for the severepollutions caused by the typical environmental pollutants including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons(PAHs), pesticides like organochlorine and heavy metals in China, and investigate the pollutanttransportation, biotransformation, enrichment and toxic effects in the marine ecosystems. Furtherstudies will be involved in elucidating their toxicological effects and mechanisms on physiological,immunological and reproductive changes from individual to the community levels, by which to evaluatethe risk and health assessment of the marine ecosystem caused by environmental pollutants. In addition,the outcome from the studies is not only beneficial to the aquaculture but also to the human health.
The introduction of Prof. Kunshan Gao
Professor Kunshan Gao is currently the distinguished chair professor of State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University, China. He obtained his Ph.D. from Kyoto University of Japan in 1989 and continued his research since then at Kansai Technical Research Institute of Kansai Electrical Co. and at University of Hawaii in USA as a postdoctoral fellow. He was appointed as associate professor of Shantou Univ. in 1995, and became recognized as the outstanding young scientist in 1996 by NSFC (39625002, 1996), then as professor for one hundred talented programs in the Institute of Hydrobiology by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1997. Professor Gao’s scientific interests are in the areas of: ecophysiology of algae and algal photobiology, focusing on the environmental impacts of increasing atmospheric CO2 under solar radiation. He has published 230 peer-reviewed papers in internationally recognized peer-reviewed high impact journals such as Nature Climate Change, Nature Communications, Global Change Biology, Plant Physiology and so on. The publications related to ecophysiological effects of UV radiation on calcifying algae and diatoms were highlighted in IPCC (2011) and UNEP (2014) workshop reports. His research achievements on ecological effects of UV radiation and ocean acidification were widely recognized, and he has been invited to write reviews for MEPS and Functional Plant Biology. He has completed 2 key projects (39830060 and 40930864) from NSFC, related to the effects of rising pCO2 and ocean acidification on primary producers, and 1 key project (90411018) from NSFC investigating the physiological and ecological responses of primary producers to UV radiation. Currently, he is running another key project (41430967) from NSFC to investigate the relationship of photosynthetic carbon fixation and carbonate system changes: mechanisms and integrated impacts. He is the editorial board member of some international journals, such asJournal of Applied Phycology (Springer), Algae. And he is the member of Ocean Acidification international Reference User Group (OAiRUG) and UNEP Environmental Effects Assessment Panel.