One Size Doesn't Fit All: Developing Bioavailability-based Models for Zinc Toxicity to Microalgae
Increasing urbanisation and industrialisation are intensifying pressures on natural ecosystems. This includes metal contamination in freshwater environments. Australia is a major miner and refiner of zinc ore. These operations could lead to increased risk of zinc contamination to freshwater systems due to spills, discharge and runoff. Australia implements national default water quality guidelines to manage this risk. The current guideline values for zinc, however, do not adequately account for water chemistry parameters that are known to modify zinc toxicity to aquatic organisms. To develop national zinc water quality guidelines that account for a range of water chemistries and are relevant to Australian freshwater conditions, a detailed understanding of how water chemistry influences zinc toxicity is needed. To date, there has been limited understanding of how water chemistry affects zinc toxicity to microalgae, a key group of organisms in freshwater ecosystems that are also used in Australian water quality guideline development. Thus, this thesis investigated the influence of a range of water chemistry conditions on the chronic toxicity of zinc to a freshwater microalga, Chlorella sp.
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