The emerging threat of Ca decline: quantifying current and predicting future Ca levels and their effects on aquatic biota in a 1600 lake watershed

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The ongoing decline of soil, stream, pond and lake water Ca concentrations poses an emerging threat to the forests and lakes of the eastern Canadian Shield, but we currently do not have the information needed to quantify the severity and spatial extent of this threat, nor do we know how this threat might be affected by ongoing forest disturbances of fire and logging. In this new collaboration of a geospatial statistician, an aquatic ecotoxicologist, and two watershed biogeochemists, we will: 1) assess the current threat of Ca decline to one important group of Ca-rich biota (the animal plankton) in a large 1600-lake Ontario watershed; and 2) quantify how future acid deposition rates linked to international agreements on allowable SO2 emissions, forest fire frequencies linked to a changing climate, and logging practises might alter the threat of Ca decline. Ca decline is an emerging environmental issue, but one that might affect large tracts of eastern Canadian forests and surface waters, and similar ecosystems in the eastern USA and western Europe. Our objective is to determine the severity of this threat in one sensitive watershed as a necessary first step in assessing how serious the issue of Ca decline might become for Canada.