Professor Kenneth Leung selected for the 2016 Biwako Prize for Ecology
The Award Presentation Ceremony was held on August 27, 2017 at Lake Biwa Museum in Japan, at which Professor Kenneth M Y Leung (Croucher Fellowship 2000) gave a public lecture entitled “Scientific Derivation of Environmental Quality Benchmarks for Protecting Aquatic Ecosystems: Problems and Solutions.”
Environmental quality benchmarks (EQBs) such as water and sediment quality guidelines are commonly established around thr world for regulating and managing chemical contaminants in aquatic environments. The EQBs can also be adopted as targets for environmental management and as clean-up goals for environmental remediation.
In the talk, Leung examined the current practices in deriving the EQBs. There are a lot of uncertainties that affect EQB, for example temperature, salinity, and pH. “We need to employ empirical toxicity data and Quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) models to predict the EQBs at different environmental scenarios.” Leung also introduced some novel ways of deriving EQBs for chemical mixtures including integration of concurrently obtaining environmental DNA (e-DNA) and chemical data.
The Biwako Prize for Ecology has been awarded annually since 1991 to researchers under the age of 50 who have made academically and socially significant achievements in ecological studies in fields related to aquatic environments. Each year 2 nominees are selected for the prize.
To view Professor Leung’s Croucher profile, please click here.
For more information about the Biwako Prize for Ecology, please click here.