When it comes to carrying out studies on ecosystems such as rivers, lakes, estuaries and oceans, between the small-scale laboratory experiments and those carried out in the natural environment is experimentation in mesocosms. These are installations with large volumes of water isolated but maintained in conditions close to those of the natural environment in which environmental factors can be manipulated in a realistic way. Since April 1, the Marine Research Centre (CIM) of the University of Vigo has been part of a European project that, under the name of Aquacosm-Plus, constitutes the first international network of mesocosm installations.
The project, called Network of Leading Ecosystem Scale Experimental Aquatic Mesocosm Facilities Connecting Rivers, Lakes, Estuaries and Oceans in Europe and Beyond (Aquacosm-Plus), is funded by the EU H2020 Programme with a total of almost ten million euros, of which the University of Vigo will receive 131,312.5 euros. With a duration of 48 months, the initiative involves 30 partners from 16 countries, with the participation of the Vigo academic institution, supported by the Xunta de Galicia and the European Union (FEDER/FSE Galicia 2014-2020), José González, coordinator of the Oceanography Unit and mesocosm facilities at the Toralla Marine Science Station (Ecimat), and Ramiro Varela, also a researcher at the CIM. According to the participating researchers, the network established in Aquacosm-Plus “is the only mesocosm network that exists in the world today and although its origin is European and at the moment its members are also European, collaborations are also being established with other facilities existing on other continents.”
The network that constitutes Aquacosm-Plus, its managers detail, has as its main objective to facilitate access for research staff to the cutting-edge facilities in this field that exist in Europe, standardizing the methodologies and techniques used in each center, offering protocols and specialized technical personnel and training for new generations of scientists”. This coordinated work within the network, comments José González, will allow experiments to be carried out in different scenarios, ranging from lakes to seas and from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. “The importance of having this wide variety of scenarios is that it allows us to carry out multiple studies and approaches to face the challenges that are presented to us, such as climate change”, he emphasizes.
Facilities of the Toralla Marine Science Station
In this project, as indicated by its managers at the University of Vigo, the existing CIM mesocosm facilities at Ecimat will be used, both on land and at sea. Both the CIM and the Ecimat, underlines José González, have committed in recent years to strengthening this line of research with the construction in 2016 of two platforms for carrying out mesocosm experiments at sea and the recent construction of facilities on land that are scheduled to start operating this spring. “Precisely, the fact of having these infrastructures is what allowed us to join this European network”, indicates the researcher. These facilities, he adds, represent “an important contribution to the network, since they are the only mesocosm facilities existing in Europe in a coastal outcrop region such as the Rías Baixas”.
The role of the University of Vigo in the project, explain its managers, is, like the other partners: to participate in the standardization of methodologies and protocols at a European level and in joint experiments with other institutions to study the effects of various factors on the different ecosystems covered by this network and to facilitate access to researchers from other centers. “Belonging to this network, they add, will allow the exchange of researchers between institutions, being able to access at all times the most appropriate facilities for the object of study and to promote collaborations between the different centers that make up this network. In addition, points out José González, “this project will allow CIM researchers who currently work in mesocosms to participate in various international activities, collaborate with researchers from other centers and benefit from the activities that are developed.”
Advantages
The advantage of conducting studies in mesocosms over laboratory studies, emphasizes the coordinator of the Oceanography Unit of the Ecimat, “is obvious, but it also presents advantages over direct study in the natural environment, such as the possibility of manipulating environmental conditions (from temperature to salinity); of studying the effects of the addition of substances (from nutrients to pollutants) and of simultaneously using replicas and different gradients of the conditions to be studied”. These possibilities, he adds, “allow us to study in a realistic way the possible future scenarios that we will have to face due to climate change”.
Participation in this European project, indicate those responsible at the academic institution, is another step in the trajectory developed in this field since, they recall, “from the Marine Research Center we have been working for many years on mesocosm experimentation, both using temporary facilities in the Vigo estuary and participating in projects developed in foreign research centers, so there was already contact with other researchers and with other facilities of marine stations in other parts of Europe”. Thus, they point out, they collaborated with the previous European project from which Aquacosm-Plus was born, called Aquacosm.
Source: DUVI
