Recovery of Smelter-Impacted Peat and Sphagnum Moss: a Microbial Perspective
Abstract
Peatlands store approximately one-half of terrestrial soil carbon and one-tenth of non-glacial freshwater. Some of these important ecosystems are located near heavy metal emitting smelters. To improve the understanding of smelter impacts and potential recovery after initial pollution controls in the 1970s (roughly 50 years of potential recovery), we sampled peatlands along a distance gradient of 134 km from a smelter in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, an area with over a century of nickel (Ni) and copper (Cu) mining activity. This work is aimed at evaluating potential shifts in bacterial and archaeal community structures in Sphagnum moss and its underlying peat within smelter-impacted poor fens. In peat, total Ni and Cu concentrations were higher (0.062–0.067 and 0.110–0.208 mg/g, respectively) at sites close to the smelter and exponentially dropped with distance from the smelter. This exponential decrease in Ni …
abstract: “Peatlands store approximately one-half of terrestrial soil carbon and one-tenth of non-glacial freshwater. Some of these important ecosystems are located near heavy metal emitting smelters. To improve the understanding of smelter impacts and potential recovery after initial pollution controls in the 1970s (roughly 50 years of potential recovery), we sampled peatlands along a distance gradient of 134 km from a smelter in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, an area with over a century of nickel (Ni) and copper (Cu) mining activity. This work is aimed at evaluating potential shifts in bacterial and archaeal community structures in Sphagnum moss and its underlying peat within smelter-impacted poor fens. In peat, total Ni and Cu concentrations were higher (0.062–0.067 and 0.110–0.208 mg/g, respectively) at sites close to the smelter and exponentially dropped with distance from the smelter. This exponential decrease in Ni …” authors:
- James Seward
- Suzanna Bräuer
- Peter Beckett
- Pascale Roy-Léveillée
- E_Emilson
- Shaun Watmough
- Nathan Basiliko featured: false projects: [] publication: ‘Microbial Ecology’ publication_short: '' publication_types:
- “2” date: ‘2023-08-26T00:00:00Z’ publishDate: ‘2023-11-22’ title: ‘Recovery of Smelter-Impacted Peat and Sphagnum Moss: a Microbial Perspective’ url_pdf: “https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00248-023-02289-5.pdf" url_source: “https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00248-023-02289-5"
Erik Emilson
Research Scientist, Watershed Ecology Team Lead, Associate Editor CJFR
I am interested in how forests support freshwater ecosystem services. My research combines microbial and molecular approaches to undertand how forest productivity and disturbances affect ecosystem functions in headwater streams and lakes.