Iron mining began in Wawa, Ontario in the late 1800s and ceased in 1998. The sintering process of iron pyrite produced sulfur dioxide which led to the acidification of nearby lakes. Benthic macroinvertebrate samples were collected from lakes along a gradient of historical impairment in Wawa to examine the extent to which the benthos of the lakes would separate along the historical impairment gradient. The results show that the lakes are not separated along a gradient of impairment, and acid-intolerant taxa were collected in previously acidified lakes. There was no ameliorative intervention to combat the historical acidification and the observed recovery of water chemistry and benthos is entirely due to natural ecosystem processes. The two sampling methods (littoral kick sampling using a D-net and Hester-Dendy substrates) used to sample the benthos in these lakes can lead to substantial differences in the taxa collected.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/17447 |
| Date | 14 July 2009 |
| Creators | St John, Margaretha Ann |
| Contributors | Jackson, Donald Andrew |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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