Overview
The Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health brings together scientists and community engagement/community science initiatives sharing facilities, resources and expertise to tackle interrelated projects addressing the role of environmental changes in structuring cHAB communities and the ensuing threats cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (cHABs) pose to human health. Resolving the varied drivers of system function will inform effective management strategies to promote safe drinking and recreational waters in both the lower Great Lakes and worldwide. A deeper understanding of the impacts of cHABs on human health, and how environmental perturbations are modulating these health impacts, will directly inform medical practitioners and public health agencies, thus improving health care and public health measures for prevention and mitigation of cHAB-related illness.
To address the central scientific theme of the role of environmental changes in shaping cHABs and adverse human health outcomes, we have designed an innovative approach to integrate observations, experiments, and modeling at the nexus of limnology, climatology, microbiology, and biomedical science. The Center will link the research of four interrelated and complementary research projects.
Approach
While each of the four projects is meritorious scientifically, they are complementary to each other and unified by the goal of determining how environmental change affects cHABs and how cHABs impact human health. Here we describe the broad research strategy that the Center will use to address the scientific theme of understanding how environmental drivers shape cHABs and human health impacts. Whereas the specific aims and detailed methods of the projects are articulated within the individual proposals, here we lay out the broader aims of the Center and explain how the proposed projects and cores will work together and share resources to address the overall goals of the Center more effectively than would be possible with independent projects.