Department Systems Analysis, Integrated Assessment and Modelling

Pesticides can have direct and indirect effects on freshwater communities. Food webs in these systems include primary producers, zooplankton, and macroinvertebrates.

Complex relationships between these organisms make it difficult to determine the specific negative impacts of pesticides on ecosystem community structure and function. To address these challenges, we intend to develop a mechanistic model. The model will be used to simulate aquatic food webs to explore the specific impacts of pesticides. We will apply Bayesian inference to include prior knowledge in the calibration and quantify different sources of uncertainty. The first application of the model will be on experimental mesocosm data with Eprinomectin, an antiparasitic pesticide.

This project is conducted in close collaboration with Mesocosm GmbH in Germany, who is responsible for data collection and experimental design to better inform mechanistic models.