Foodweb transfer, sediment transport, and biological impacts of emerging and legacy organic contaminants in the lower Columbia River, Oregon and Washington, USA: USGS Contaminants and Habitat (ConHab) Project

Abstract

Science of the Total Environment 484 (2014) 319–321 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Science of the Total Environment journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scitotenv Introduction Foodweb transfer, sediment transport, and biological impacts of emerging and legacy organic contaminants in the lower Columbia River, Oregon and Washington, USA: USGS Contaminants and Habitat (ConHab) Project The effects of chemicals of emerging and of legacy concern—including their quantities, spatial patterns, transfer, and accumulation—on food- webs in large aquatic ecosystems are little understood. As such, the Columbia River Contaminants and Habitat Characterization (ConHab) Project, an interdisciplinary study, investigated transport pathways, chemical fates and effects of polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants and other endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in water, sediments, and the foodweb in the lower Columbia River, Oregon and Washington, USA. The ConHab project was a collaboration of 13 principal investigators from seven US states. The approach included interdisciplinary technol- ogies and strategies, such as passive sampling, novel analytical chemis- try methods, endocrine and reproductive biomarker development and use, gene expression microarray development and use, and coupling geochemical data to habitat characteristics and hydrodynamic and sediment transport modeling. The Columbia River drains roughly 670,000 square kilometers of the Pacific Northwest of the United States and flows more than 1950 kilo- meters from its headwaters in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, across the State of Washington, and along the border of Oregon and Washington to its mouth at the Pacific Ocean. The system provides critical habitat for 13 stocks of threatened and endangered salmonid species and numerous resident fish. Aquatic biota using or residing in the lower Columbia River are exposed to a variety of environmental contaminants from numerous sources, including municipal and indus- trial permitted discharges, atmospheric deposition, urban and industrial nonpoint source pollution, accidental spills of hydrocarbons and haz- ardous materials, and runoff from agricultural and forested areas as Fig. 1. Map of the region with inset of the study area. Foodweb sampling areas are shaded and labeled: Skamania, Columbia City, and Longview. (Map created by Jill Hardiman, USGS, Western Fisheries Research Center, Cook, Washington, USA). 0048-9697/$ – see front matter. Published by Elsevier B.V. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2013.07.127