Stewardship Foundation retreat hears that climate change is not coming... it's already here

Jeff Green | May 10, 2017

The Frontenac Stewardship Foundation held it annual retreat at the Queen’s University Biological Station (QUBS) this year. The location, on Lake Opinicon, is emblematic of Frontenac County in that it sits at the edge of the Canadian Shield, having one foot in the fractured limestone and another in the hard granite of the shield. The station is not located in Frontenac, however, being just over the border in Leeds Grenville, 20 km from Perth Road on the scenic, winding Opinicon Road.

The conference provided an opportunity for a dozen or so groups and organisations that are involved in stewardship activities on the four watersheds that intersect in Frontenac County to update each other on their activities and look for ways to work together in the future.

Frontenac County was well represented at the event. Newly hired county community planner, Megan Rueckwald delivered a presentation on the relationship between stewardship and land use planning in the Frontenac Official Plan, Communications Officer Marco Smits sits on the Foundation Board as well and was at the retreat, as were Councillors John McDougall and Dennis Doyle.    

Professor Stephen Lougheed, who is the QUBS Director and a self described “simple country geneticist” spoke about the long term studies of pond frogs with a focus on the 200 km x 200 km region surrounding the centre have demonstrated changes in the local climate over an 80 year time frame, going back to 1930. During his own research career, song metres have been installed at locations throughout the region, which turn on 15 minutes after sunset and stay on for an hour. They have gathered invaluable data for the research done by him and his students and colleagues from around the world.

He said that since 1970, the average temperature in the region in the month of March has risen by 2.8 degrees. In his own research this is seen as a causal factor in a change in the date when frogs are first seen each year. He also tracks the date when frog songs, one the harbingers of spring and the marking point of the end of syrup season in Frontenac County, are first heard.

“The average first sighting of the American Toad has changed from day 115 after the start of the year [late April] to day 95 [early April]. Data of first calling has shifted from day 140 to day 120. The Leopard Frog has shifted even more, 37 days earlier,” he said.

“Another change has been in the pattern of rain. We are seeing less rain in April and early May [this year being a notable exception] and more rain in early June. This has implications for amphibians.”
The climate change information from the scientific community around the world is irrefutable, in his view, but the specific implications for individual species is hard to pinpoint because we don’t know all the factors at play. He uses his own studies of frogs as an example.

“We know almost nothing about 95% of the life cycle of the frogs we study. Once they leave the pond we don’t know where they go or what they do or how they live. We don’t know how the climate change effects that part of their life cycle at all.”
Professor John Smol is a paleo - limnologist. He studies the sediment at the bottom of lakes, which holds a wealth of information about the last 12,000 years in this region, the time when the ice retreated and the lakes were formed.

In his talk, entitled History Matters, Smol said that it is important to know as much background as possible when trying to figure out what is going on. He said it is like dealing with a medical patient.

“If you get a certain reading it can mean different things depending on the patients medical history. It can be a cause for alarm, if it is a sudden change, it can be the marker of a gradual change, or mean nothing because that is the patients normal level,” he said.

One of Smol’s research initiatives has to do with developing better ways to gather data from lake sediment. While the sediment representing ancient times is easier to analyze because it is more solid, more recent sediment is looser and easier to disturb. Smol is one of the developers of a relatively simple tool for the job, and is able to segment out thin layers representing small increments of time. All of this enriches the library of data that can be analysed.

That does not mean, however, that the implications of environmental changes are easy to predict, however, as factors that may be relevant or even crucial are not always apparent.

The example he chose to illustrate this principle, is of interest to people who live on or near local lakes, particularly canadian shield lakes.

Smol said the problem that “he cut his teeth on” as a scientist was that of acid rain. The ph levels on the Canadian Shield lakes that he studied was dropping and it was making the water unsuitable for the plants that were the base species of the aquatic food chain.

In 1990, amendments to the Clean Air Act in the United States to address Sulfur Dioxide and other emissions were signed in to law by then US President George Bush, and as one of the researchers who contributed to the design of the regulations, Smol was on hand in Washington for the signing. Acid rain is considered to be a success story in terms of environmental regulation. The targets for decreases have been met, and the cost to industry, estimated at $1 billion per year, are 1/4 of what they were projected to be.

And ph levels have recovered in most lakes that were affected. But, as Smol pointed out, the story does not end there.

One of the effects of acid rain was a decrease in calcium levels in canadian shield lakes.

Based on some of the limnological research, scientists have found that calcium levels in Shield lakes has been pretty steady for thousand of years. As Smol explained, it is not easy to bring up calcium levels once they drop. The one major source for lakes comes from trees dying and decomposing and leaching calcium into nearby lakes, which is hindered by development and logging.

“Our lakes are basically suffering from Osteoperosis” he said. About 2/3 of Shield lakes have levels of Calcium under 2mg/litres and about 1/3 are below the threshold of 1.5mg/litre.

The 1.5 mg threshold is important because that is the level that one of the larger and more common aquatic species Daphnia (water flea) requires in order to survive and multiply.

There are two implications from this. One is direct. With the decline of Daphnia, another species has moved in to take its place. That species is called Holopedium, which are of similar size to Daphnia but have different characteristics. One is that they are covered in a jelly like substance, which makes them harder for other species to feed on and it also makes them a problem for water intake pipes because they can clog them. They have led to what some have called the “jellification” of local lakes.
Holopedium are also much less effective at grazing on algae than Daphnia, and this might be associated with the Algae blooms that have become common in recent years in some lakes.

“It’s pretty much counter intuitive to think that acid rain, which killed off algae, can be part of a chain of effects leading to the development of algae blooms, and while scientists are not saying that decreased calcium levels are the cause of algae blooms, it shows there are many implications from each change that takes place,” Smol said.

As to the low calcium levels, he said there is no obvious solution to the problem, since adding calcium directly to lakes is an expensive proposition. The only case where levels went up appreciably in the lakes that Smol has studied was in a lake that is surrounded by a gravel road that is treated with calcium carbonate each summer as a dust suppressant.

In summing up his talk, Smol talked about two of the lessons learned in his career. One is that ‘there is a recurring pattern of unintended consequences’, and the second is that “we tend to be overly optimistic. Things are generally worse and more complicated that we initially imagined.”

Smol said that he does not exactly have a reputation as an optimistic in the scientific community but even he has been overly optimistic over the years.

For more information about jellification, go to http://post.queensu.ca/~pearl/jellification/jellification.html