Healing the Boreal Shield
The Boreal Shield is Canada's largest ecozone. Home to more than one million lakes, it contains about 22 percent of our nation's total freshwater surface area. But air pollution, climate change, invasive species, and the expansion of mining, forestry and hydroelectric development severely threaten the valuable aquatic resources of this area.
As Canada Research Chair in Stressed Aquatic Systems, Dr. John Gunn is studying the effects of multiple stressors on a broad range of lake and watershed biota and ecosystems.
He and his research team are particularly focused on understanding the recovery processes that operate once stressors are removed. For this reason, the lakes near Sudbury, Ontario— once severely damaged—are the perfect lakes to study. Emissions of air pollutants in this area have declined by about 95 percent in recent decades, and many aquatic systems are exhibiting dramatic recovery.
Gunn and his team are also addressing questions such as: Can industrial brownfields be reclaimed as carbon storage sites through reforestation? How will changing climate and air quality in the North affect trace contaminants in fish eaten by First Nations communities?
The answers that Gunn and his team come up with to these and other questions are of global significance, as they demonstrate the single and combined benefits of new air pollution control technologies as well as improved land reclamation techniques.
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