Principal investigator
Jay Cullen, University of Victoria
Call
Cycle II, Bridging the Gap/KTEE
The magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake and resulting tsunami led to meltdowns in three of six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant and the discharge of large quantities of radionuclides. The environmental and public health impacts in Canada associated with the disaster are likely to be small, but there is still insufficient monitoring of radionuclides in seawater and marine biota in time and space to adequately quantify these risks. To bridge this critical knowledge gap, the research team has built a distributed monitoring network involving government, academic, private sector and citizen scientists. The InFORM network will be a model linking scientists with health professionals and outreach specialists that could be rapidly adapted and employed to address marine environmental emergencies in the future.
