DOI: 10.5061/dryad.jwstqjqpw
title: Long-term changes in Wolf Lake (Sudbury region, Ontario) situated in Mi’iangan Zaagagan Preserve: a proposed Indigenous conservation area

description: Aquatic ecosystems in northern Ontario (Canada) have been widely studied
 for responses to anthropogenic activities. Specifically, the adverse
 effects from metal smelting has cause atmospheric deposition of acidic and
 metal pollution. Sudbury (Ontario) has been considerable researched for
 the effects of century long large-scale mining and smelting operations;
 however, local Indigenous freshwater resources have been largely ignored.
 Wolf Lake, located ~50 km northeast of Sudbury, is a culturally important
 site to the Wahnapitae First Nation and local community, providing many
 ecosystem services. Given its significance, the lake and surrounding old
 growth red pine (Pinus resinosa) forest is being proposed as
 an Other Effective area-based Conservation Measure. To determine
 pre-disturbance conditions to inform management decisions for the proposed
 conservation site, paleo-ecotoxicological approaches were applied. Here we
 use a multi-proxy approach of water chemistry records and sedimentary
 metals, chlorophyll a, dissolved organic carbon, and diatom assemblages
 from a dated sediment core to reconstruct long-term changes in Wolf Lake.
 A 40-year water chemistry dataset was analyzed from the Ministry of
 Environment, Conservation and Parks to reconstruct long-term lake water
 metal concentrations against sedimentary metal concentrations. Sedimentary
 metal concentrations were used to plot against threshold and probable
 effect concentrations and calculate enrichment factors. Chlorophyll
 a values were used to infer paleoproduction while dissolved
 organic carbon was used to infer past lake water conditions. The diatom
 assemblage was applied to a regional transfer function to estimate past
 lake water pH. Results indicated that Wolf Lake experienced lake
 water acidification and metal pollution linked to atmospheric deposition
 and complete recovery has yet to occur. 
description: # Long-term changes in Wolf Lake (Sudbury region, Ontario) situated in
 Mi’iangan Zaagagan Preserve: a proposed Indigenous conservation area
 Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.jwstqjqpw](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.jwstqjqpw) ##
 Description of the data and file structure Data was collected between
 2022-24. The sediment core was retrieved from the lake in 2022 and
 sectioned into 0.5 contiguous intervals. Then analyzed for sedimentary
 metals, diatoms, geochronology, chlorophyll-a, dissolved organic carbon,
 and calculated pH transfer function. This study was conducted in
 collaboration and co-authored with the Wahnapitae First Nation and
 permitted for publication and distribution.  ### Files and variables ####
 File: Diatom_Assemblage_Count_Data.csv **Description:** Species data was
 collected for 35 intervals spanning the core. Minimum 500 valves were
 enumerated per interval. The data is reported in relative abundance.
 Diatoms were identified to general and species level when possible. #####
 Variables * Depth - midpoint of interval in cm. * Genera/species name
 across the top with relative percent abundance.  #### File:
 Sedimentary_Metal_Data.csv **Description:** Geochemical sediment analysis
 was conducted at the Canadian Centre for Inland Waters. Metals data shows
 results for elemental concentration in sediment for 20 intervals spaced
 down-core. This data is reported in mg/kg, excluding Hg which is reported
 in ng/g. ##### Variables * Depth - midpoint of interval in cm. * 60
 elements and their concentration by interval (mg/kg) excluding Hg (ng/g).
 #### File: Environmental_Data.csv **Description:** This data shows
 information of observed and calculated environmental variables by
 interval. Blanks represent intervals with no data. ##### Variables * Depth
 (cm) - range of interval in cm. * Year | CRS - ^210^Pb chronology
 estimates in y. * Midpoint (cm) - midpoint of interval in cm. * THg (ng/g)
 - total mercury in sediment in ng/g. * Chl-a (mg/g dry wt.) -
 reconstructed chlorophyll a in mg/g. * DOC (mg/L) - reconstructed
 dissolved organic carbon in mg/L. * MATpH - modern analogue technique
 results for pH transfer function using Dixit et al. 2002.  * OBSpH - pH
 from lake water chemistry results. * OBSDOC - dissolved organic carbon
 concentration from lake water chemistry results. ## Code/software All
 proxy data were plotted using the riojaPlot software (Juggins 2022) in R
 (R core team 2024). ## Access information Other publicly accessible
 locations of the data: * 
 
 Data was derived from the following sources: * Historical water chemistry
 for the lake was analysed from Inland Lakes Annual Chemistry Sudbury Area
 project facilitated by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment,
 Conservation, and Parks (OMECP).