IPY-132-CANADA #186-POLAR BIOREM-BIORESTORATION OF CONTAMINATED SOILS AND SEDIMENTS NEAR SCIENTIFIC STATIONS IN POLAR REGIONS

Scientific progress has been important in the last decade, but not enough fast to face the emergency case we are now facing with the fast warm-up of both polar regions. In many cases, water soluble oil and PAHs components (the most toxic ones) have slowly migrated to permafrost level and persisted there. As permafrost layer will go down and eventually disappear in some regions, there is an urgent need to speed up research and development of efficient methods for ?biorestoration? of hydrocarbons contaminated soils and sediments in polar stations and transfer these techniques to countries without expertise and financial support in bioremediation technology.

Taking the opportunity of the IPY 2007 and the increasing awareness of world population about the importance of preserving and restoring fragile polar environments, we propose to develop a world R&D network on the best technologies to be use in a very near future to biorestore and protect soil and nearby marine ecosystems from fossil fuels and PAHs from on-site burning. Such a network is already partly in place as our team at ISMER (Universit? du Qu?bec ?

Rimouski) is working with France (Institut Paul-?mile Victor, IPEV) for over 10 years and with Argentina Antarctic Institute for 4 years. The project will consist in conducting one-year comparative bioremediation experiments in various sites using emerging techniques from participating countries and determining key factors which control the success or the failure of proposed techniques. The final step will be to transfer successful technologies to demanding countries.

This project is a world wide extension of ongoing programs on bioremediation and biorestotarion of oiled soils and sediments conducted by France and Argentina in co-operation with a Canadian team. One Canadian PhD student is presently at Juvany station with MacCormack team. Principal Canadian investigator will be at Kerguelen and Crozet Islands in January 2006.In all cases, the Canadian team is responsible for chemical and toxicological analysis.

The project includes the settlement of a permanent Canada/Argentina laboratory at Esperanza station where two large houses (formally used by officers) are already available for scientific activities around the year. If Argentina provides hosing, electricity, sampling boats and transportation to Ushuaia, the contribution from Canada is expected to provide scientific instruments and sampling means to be permanently present on the station.

Prof Emilien Pelletier - Institut des Sciences de la Mer de Rimouski (ISMER) Daniel Delille - CNRS/IPEV, France Walter MacCormack - Instituto Antartico Argentino, Argentina Antonio Curtosi - Instituto Antartico Argentino, Argentina Georges Feller - Universit? de Li?ge, Belgium Gijs Breedveld - Geotechnical Institute, Norway All countries involved in the network will have to provide the environmental status of their own past and present polar stations in order to establish where bioremediation experiments will be conducted.

The extent and intensity of the contamination will be determining factors to decide were experiments will be conducted. The project will have to locate permafrost level (if any) and estimate any change occurring in present years compared to previous decades. Experiments will be conducted in both Arctic and Antarctic stations in order to compare capacity of local bacterial communities to degrade fossil hydrocarbons under comparable weather conditions.

The project will involve "bioaugmentation experiments" using selected bacterial consortia from contaminated sites and their re-introduction at the same site with optimum conditions.