Graduate Students | Cooperative Wildlife Research Laboratory | SIU

Yan Wu

Advisor: Dr. Da Chen and Dr. Clayton Nielsen

Exposure of North American aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems to legacy and emerging flame retardants

My dissertation research aims to investigate the exposure of selected North America aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems to legacy and emerging flame retardants. The aquatic systems we will investigate include the Great Lakes of North America and the San Francisco Bay (U.S.), representing an important freshwater and an estuarine ecosystem, respectively. Peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) eggs collected from various regions in the U.S. and Canada will be used to investigate spatial and temporal distributions of flame retardants in the North American terrestrial ecosystems. Specific objectives are to: (1) investigate the contamination status and spatiotemporal trends of flame retardants in peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) eggs from various habitats in North America; (2) evaluate temporal changes of flame retardant contamination in the Great Lakes lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) during the period of 2004 – 2016; and, (3) elucidate the contamination and biomagnification of flame retardants in the San Francisco Bay ecosystem.