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Diatom assemblage changes in shallow lakes of the Athabasca Oil Sands Region are not tracking aerially deposited contaminants

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Abstract

The Athabasca Oil Sands Region (AOSR) in northeast Alberta contains Canada’s largest reserve of hydrocarbons, and the third largest in the world. Extraction and processing operations generate contaminants and nutrients that are aerially deposited across the region. However, structured environmental monitoring efforts were only initiated decades following the establishment (1967) and escalation (~ 1980) of commercial operations. We examined whether diatom assemblages preserved in 210Pb-dated sediment cores retrieved from strategically selected lakes have responded to aerial deposition of contaminants. The relative amount of contaminant inputs was tracked using sedimentary dibenzothiophene (DBT) concentrations and DBT enrichment factors, which are established proxies for AOSR activities. We observed no relationship between diatom assemblage changes and DBT enrichment. The nature of the diatom changes differed among lakes, regardless of DBT enrichment, suggesting that diatom responses were related to site-specific conditions. Moreover, diatom assemblage changes at several sites tracked trends in whole-lake primary production. Collectively, these records indicate that regional warming is likely the primary driver of recent diatom assemblage changes in these shallow, closed-basin lakes.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to D. Muir, J. Kirk, X. Wang, J. Keating, A. Gleason, J. Wiklund, C. Cooke, and personnel from Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Centre for Inland Waters for their contributions in the field and the lab. Additionally, thanks to colleagues from Queen’s University’s Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Laboratory (PEARL). This study was supported by the Canada-Alberta Joint Oil Sands Monitoring Program (www. jointoilsandsmonitoring.ca; 2012–2014) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca to Smol). The funders had no role in study design, data collection, analysis or interpretation of data, writing of the manuscript, or decision to publish.

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  1. Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Lab (PEARL), Department of Biology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada

    Nell Libera, Jamie C. Summers, Kathleen M. Rühland & John P. Smol

  2. Department of Geography and Environment, Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB, E4L 1A7, Canada

    Joshua Kurek

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  1. Nell Libera
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Fig. S1

Radioisotope activities and age-depth models for each of the six study lakes, arranged by increasing dibenzothiophene (DBT) enrichment factor. Total 210Po activity (black circles) with associated errors (± 1 SD) and 226Ra activity (dashed vertical line) are plotted on the same scale and represent total 210Pb activity and supported 210Pb activity, respectively. Constant rate of supply (CRS)-inferred dates and associated errors (± 2 SD) are denoted with grey circles and error bars. Grey circles without error bars represent extrapolated dates (TIFF 25487 kb)

Fig. S2

Historical mean temperatures representative of the Athabasca Oil Sands Region (AOSR) from 1940–2016. Data are from Environment and Climate Change Canada Fort McMurray station (ID: 3062696). Plots are separated into the annual record and seasonal records including winter (December, January and February), spring (March, April and May), summer (June, July and August), and autumn (September, October and November). The solid red lines are the fitted values from a generalized additive model, and annotations in the upper left corner are the difference in fitted values from 2016 to 1940. The dashed horizontal lines are the mean values of each record (JPEG 594 kb)

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Libera, N., Summers, J.C., Rühland, K.M. et al. Diatom assemblage changes in shallow lakes of the Athabasca Oil Sands Region are not tracking aerially deposited contaminants. J Paleolimnol 64, 257–272 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-020-00136-y

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