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Impact of global change on the remobilization and Bioaccumulation of organic Pollutants in PolAr aquatic food webs (BioPollAr)
Start date: Jun 16, 2015, End date: Jun 15, 2018 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Global change, especially global warming, is affecting the Polar Areas with great magnitude. Some of the most rapid changes associated with warming are occurring in polar terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems, associated with changes in the carbon cycle (C-cycle), sea ice dynamics, nutrient loadings and perturbation of sinks of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and greenhouse gases. In addition to the direct influence that increasing temperatures will have on the polar ecosystems, perturbations of the C-cycle driven by a warming climate will affect the biogeochemical cycle of POPs, and thus their transport, fate and effects along the polar aquatic food webs. However, the coupling of these perturbations of the carbon, by climate change and the cycling of organic pollutants are still far from being well understood. Biogeochemical cycles of POPs and C in aquatic ecosystems may be linked in various ways such as for example water-air exchange and soil-air exchange processes or metabolic processes such as respiration although there are still important gaps in the literature. In terms of the understanding of the impacts that changing pathways and climatic conditions will have on the contaminants, BioPollAr project aims to understand how POPs are coupled with the C-cycle in polar aquatic ecosystems and how climate change will affect the fate and bioavailability of POPs and their effects through the food webs. This will be achieved by crossing bridges between environmental chemistry, biology, statistics and modeling. The output of BioPollAr project will help us to understand the impacts that changing pathways and climatic conditions will have on contaminant transfer within food webs that eventually include humans as top consumers
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