Invasion process of the nonindigenous golden mussel, Limnoperna fortunei, in the South to North Water Diversion Project, China, and its impact on associated aquatic ecosystem health

The Central Route of South to North Water Diversion (SNWD) project in China aims at transferring water from Yangtze River Basin to Beijing and Tianjin via a 1276 km open water canal across China. This represents a great risk for the accepting water bodies to be biologically invaded. The home university, University of Windsor, has been involved in the International project assessing the bio-risk of the SNWD. The trip of the applicant student to China is to sample in the source water and canal, and learn environmental DNA technology in order to find out the invasion process of the golden mussel in SNDW and assess its impacts on associated aquatic ecosystem. He will cooperate with Dr. Aibin Zhan who has accumulated a huge database in golden mussel in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This collaboration could lead to improvement of methodology for assessing invasive species risk of long distance water diversion in the home institute in Canada.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Doug Haffner

Student:

Zhiqiang (Dylan) Xia

Partner:

Discipline:

Environmental sciences

Sector:

University:

University of Windsor

Program:

Globalink Research Award