Monitoring land reclamation and ecosystem sustainability in the Greater Sudbury Region

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A collaborative research project was initiated in 2005 with funding from NSERC, Vale - Limited and Glencore. Key results from the initial two phases that focused on assessing the sustainability of reclaimed lands in the Greater Sudbury Region (GSR) can be summarized as follows: 1) the bioavailable portion of the anthropogenic metal content is very small; 2) soil acidity (pH) and bioavailable aluminum appear to be the key limiting factors for plant growth in the ecosystems studied; 3) species potentially suitable for phytoremediation in the GSR were identified and characterized; 4) key conifer populations are sustainable for the long term, with red pine being the notable exception; 5) the regional tree planting initiatives have increased the genetic variability for the pine populations; 6) the observed genetic variations in the hardwood populations are moderate to high indicating long term sustainability; 7) liming appears to have improved overall forest population health, with differences between limed sites in the GSR and distal comparison sites being still discernible; and 8) Overall, metal contaminated sites show poor forest health and biodiversity compared to distal comparison sites.This final leg of the program aims at 1) determining the association between above ground plant diversity and soil microbial diversity for long term forest ecosystem sustainability in the GSR and 2) identifying management practices and factors affecting soil microbial diversity. Preliminary study related to the current proposal for few sites revealed that microbial activity and soil health can be assessed using simple cost-effective techniques. In the present proposal, soil microbial diversity and abundance will be analyzed in details for all the sites using a cocktail of updated techniques: phospholipid fatty acid analysis (PLFA) and megagenomics. Microbial functions will be assessed using soil respiration and enzymatic assays. It is expected that the results of this complete study will provide to stakeholders a regional map related to the ecological sustainability of terrestrial ecosystems and the success of risk management approaches in the GSR. More importantly, the project will train a number of highly qualified personnel.