Modelling of antibiotics and antimicrobial resistant bacteria in rivers in China

Antibiotics in the environment pose a potential risk to ecosystems and human health. Under the selection pressure of antibiotics, microorganisms can develop antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which counteract the effectiveness of antibiotics. If AMR is not curbed, there will be 10 million deaths worldwide because of it in 2050. Due to the difficulty of monitoring, there is a lack of data on antibiotics, AMR in rivers in China. For this situation, modelling is a powerful tool to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the problem. Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a good option to study AMR. Therefore, the objective of this research is to contribute to a better understanding of the sources and the behavior of antibiotics, E. coli and AMR E. coli in rivers in China, and to design intervention policies and technologies for sustainable management of antibiotics, E. coli and AMR E. coli in China by modelling. A spatially-explicit antibiotics model and an E. coli model in rivers in China will be developed first. Then, an AMR E. coli model will be built based on the previous two models. Finally, scenarios of implementing different policies and technologies will be explored and analyzed using these three models to help better manage antibiotics and antimicrobial resistant bacteria (ARB) in China. This study will fill the knowledge gap of the absence of ARB models in rivers at a large scale and provide a systematic modelling approach to properly manage chemical pollutants and bacteria.