Abstract
Since 1985, monitoring activities have been conducted in a network of 43 lakes comprising the Québec portion of the Long-Range Transport of Airborne Pollutants (LRTAP) program. The results to date indicate that Québec lakes generally are responding positively to the generalized decline in precipitation sulfate (SO 2−4 ), with 40 of the 43 lakes now showing steep declines in SO4 2− concentrations. The drop in SO 2−4 was associated with a significant decrease in Ca2+ concentrations in 77% of the lakes (67% for Mg2+ concentrations). overall, the acid-neutralizing capacity was increasing in 19 lakes and decreasing only in three, while 21 lakes showed no temporal trends. Compared with previous trend studies of the LRTAP-Québec network for the period of 1985–1993, the longer period (1985–1999) shows a clear improvement, with the proportion of lakes that were acidifying changing from 24 to 7% and with the proportion of lakes that were recovering changing from 16 to 35%. These observations suggest that the recent drop in SO 2−4 deposition in the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada was significant enough to allow chemical recovery for a significant proportion of Québec lakes.
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Houle, D., Gagnon, C., Couture, S., Kemp, A. (2004). Recent Recovery of Lake Water Quality in Southern Québec following Reductions in Sulfur Emissions. In: Wieder, R.K., Novák, M., Vile, M.A. (eds) Biogeochemical Investigations of Terrestrial, Freshwater, and Wetland Ecosystems across the Globe. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0952-2_18
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