How Clean Is Our City? A Question for Bee and Salmon

Rapid urbanization, exploding human population, and climate change create urgent scientific and societal challenges that highlight the need for ongoing and adaptive environmental monitoring. Honey from Apis mellifera (Western honeybee) can serve as a biomonitor by elucidating small-scale pollutant distribution within a city or regionally. A pilot study in Metro Vancouver (BC, Canada) concluded that trace element concentrations and lead (Pb) isotopic compositions of honey reflect nearby land use and anthropogenic activities such as shipping ports and heavy traffic. In parallel, we investigated the primary contamination sources, regional transport, and food-web transfer of Pb and Hg across inland British Columbia (BC), in coastal waters, and in the open ocean of the northeast Pacific using a variety of shellfish and fish species collected in BC as bioindicators and measure their Pb and Hg concentrations and isotopic compositions. The lecture will discuss the tools used, the implications of our studies in the Pacific Northwest and the application of such environmental proxies to cities such as Paris and New York, providing a framework for the use of biomonitoring techniques to source metals in our environment.