Pollution in the coastal wetlands of East Asia: Cascading effects from littoral macroinvertebrates to migrating shorebirds

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2020

End date

12/31/2024

Budget

1,224,096 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

Globally, coastal ecosystems are undergoing rapid changes with respect to habitat degradation and pollution, which is especially true along the East Asian coastline due to rapid industrial and urban development. This has led to effects on coastal wetlands in terms of biodiversity and also on the quality of the stopover sites for migrating birds, such as shorebirds. Shorebird populations are declining at an alarming rate along the East Asian Australasian flyway, the reasons for which are mostly unknown. Besides habitat degradation, pollution is suspected to play a role in these declines. One way that pollutants might decrease survival during migration may be through effects on the immune system that can affect the susceptibility to infectious diseases. Pollution has indeed been related to the outbreaks and increase in infectious disease as early as the 1960s in both animals, including birds, and humans. In this project, we study the impact of pollution in combination with food availability and infectious disease (i.e. avian influensa) on migrating shorebirds, with a specific focus on pollution picked up in Chinese coastal wetlands used as stop-over sites during migration. We have analysed benthic and sediment samples collected along the Chinese coast for both legacy and emerging organic pollutants and identified Bohai bay as a hot spot for pollutant exposure to the shorebirds during migration. We have also analysed polltutants in shorebirds from Australia and are currently in the process of obtaining the samples from shorebirds collected along the Chinese coast. We have also identified some potential biomarkers for effects on the immune system in the shorebirds (specific micro RNAs), which are under process of further validation. We have several articles under preparation and have presented our work at international conferences. The project is the first to study the combined impact of pollution and infectious disease on the decline of migratory shorebirds. As there is currently no information on this, the results of the project are expected to bring scientific renewal and to help inform conservation and risk management measures for important stop-over ecosystems. The project will provide new generic knowledge about the effects of pollution on migratory birds, and the results will thus also provide important knowledge to Norwegian authorities for sustainable management of bird populations that have migratory routes along the Norwegian coast.