Groundwater represent almost 22% of freshwater on Earth, which, excluding glaciers and icecaps, is one of the largest reservoir of water available for human use. It provides one third of the global freshwater supply for domestic, agricultural, and industrial purposes, and serves as the only source of freshwater for about 2.5 billion people worldwide. Groundwater is also highly diverse, being home for several rare and endemic species with particular morphologic, physiologic and metabolic adaptations, exclusively found here. Groundwater communities stands for main biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and other elements, delivering essential ecosystem services such as the provision of clean freshwater or biodegradation of contaminants, among many others. Impacts on groundwater ecosystems may vary between climate zones, however, there are several adverse impacts affecting biodiversity and consequently the ecosystem services they provide: 1) declining groundwater levels due to overall reduced recharge along with an increasing groundwater demands, 2) extreme hydrological events, such as severe droughts followed by heavy rainfalls, 3) increase in groundwater temperature in the long term, particularly affecting shallow aquifers, and 4) deterioration of groundwater quality due to contamination from the surface.

Our current investigations are focused on:

Integrated assessment of groundwater ecosystem services using abiotic and biotic component following the Water Framework Directive (WFD 2000/60/EC) and Groundwater Framework Directive (GWD 2006/118/EC)
Groundwater ecotoxicology (currently centered on endocrine disruptors such is Bisphenol A)

Global Research for eDNA in Groundwater (GReG)

Stygofauna – aquatic fauna evolved to live underground, is currently identified up to lower taxonomic levels on labour-intensive morphological analyses. Environmental DNA (eDNA)-based methods have the potential to signficantly improve species identification providing a quick, affordable, and reliable molecular approach for biodiversity assessments in groundwater ecosystems. eDNA become a powerful biomonitoring tool that started to be recently used in subterranean ecosystems. We aim at developing high-resolution eDNA tools for monitoring biodiversity in subterranean organisms across different aquifers (karstic, volcanic) in Romania, in order to improve the subterranean biodiversity assessment, facilitate groundwater species conservation and obtain new information into the evolutionary processes in subterranean realm.

Groundwater ecotoxicology

One of the main contaminants of emerging concern discovered in both surface- and ground-waters throughout Europe, are endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs). EDCs are organic substances that may interfere with the endocrine system and are found in a wide range of products used in everyday life. Recently, there has been growing interest among the scientific community in testing and learning the potential risk ECDs may pose to both, human health and freshwater ecosystems, and even if the dangers are not yet fully understood, a direct association between exposure of EDCs and changes in the reproduction, development and growth of several organisms has been already demonstrated. Bisphenol A (BPA), a commercially important compound used in the production of polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins, is the most highly produced synthetic chemical in the world (> 3 million tons annually) with endocrine disruptive effects. We test the toxicity and effects of Bisphenol A, trough ecotoxicological bioassays, on both surface and groundwater crustaceans survival and physiology.