Developing pre-industrial baselines from floodplain lake sediment cores to quantify the extent of metals pollution within the Alberta Oil Sands Region
Oil sands mining operations began in 1967, but the onset of a monitoring program to assess water and sediment quality in the Athabasca River watershed began 30 years later. Consequently, no knowledge of pre-industrial, baseline conditions exists upon which current river sediment quality can be compa...
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University of Waterloo
2018
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ftunivwaterloo:oai:uwspace.uwaterloo.ca:10012/14181 2023-05-15T15:26:00+02:00 Developing pre-industrial baselines from floodplain lake sediment cores to quantify the extent of metals pollution within the Alberta Oil Sands Region Klemt, Wynona 2018-11-14 http://hdl.handle.net/10012/14181 en eng University of Waterloo http://hdl.handle.net/10012/14181 Alberta oil sands metals of concern paleolimnology Master Thesis 2018 ftunivwaterloo 2022-06-18T23:02:10Z Oil sands mining operations began in 1967, but the onset of a monitoring program to assess water and sediment quality in the Athabasca River watershed began 30 years later. Consequently, no knowledge of pre-industrial, baseline conditions exists upon which current river sediment quality can be compared. This has undermined an ability to determine the relative importance of contaminants supplied by natural processes versus pollution to the Athabasca River by rapid growth of oil sands development. In this study, a paleolimnological approach was used to analyze sediment cores from five flood-influenced lakes located upstream and downstream of oil sands operations within the Alberta Oil Sands Region (AOSR). Loss-on-ignition and organic carbon and nitrogen elemental analyses were used to differentiate periods of strong and weak Athabasca River flood influence. In addition, the temporal changes in concentrations of bitumen-associated metals vanadium (V) and nickel (Ni) were explored at each lake. A pre-industrial baseline was developed using pre-1967 sediment concentrations of V and Ni, normalized to aluminum concentration, from lakes in the AOSR to estimate the natural range of variability of these metals. When normalized metals concentrations in recently deposited flood-influenced sediment were compared to the pre-industrial baseline, no evidence of enrichment in the river-derived stratigraphic intervals was detected. However, significant enrichment of bitumen-related metals V and Ni (up to 2- and 1.6-fold above the baseline, respectively) was observed in weakly flood-influenced sediment in the two floodplain lakes located closest to the most active mining operations (< 10 km), indicating local atmospheric pollution. Athabasca River sediment data collected by regional monitoring programs RAMP (1997-2002) and JOSM (2012-2014) were examined in the context of the newly developed baselines and showed enrichment of V (1.2-1.7x baseline) and Ni (1.2-2.0x baseline) at some of the river monitoring sites, usually proximal ... Master Thesis Athabasca River University of Waterloo, Canada: Institutional Repository Athabasca River |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
University of Waterloo, Canada: Institutional Repository |
op_collection_id |
ftunivwaterloo |
language |
English |
topic |
Alberta oil sands metals of concern paleolimnology |
spellingShingle |
Alberta oil sands metals of concern paleolimnology Klemt, Wynona Developing pre-industrial baselines from floodplain lake sediment cores to quantify the extent of metals pollution within the Alberta Oil Sands Region |
topic_facet |
Alberta oil sands metals of concern paleolimnology |
description |
Oil sands mining operations began in 1967, but the onset of a monitoring program to assess water and sediment quality in the Athabasca River watershed began 30 years later. Consequently, no knowledge of pre-industrial, baseline conditions exists upon which current river sediment quality can be compared. This has undermined an ability to determine the relative importance of contaminants supplied by natural processes versus pollution to the Athabasca River by rapid growth of oil sands development. In this study, a paleolimnological approach was used to analyze sediment cores from five flood-influenced lakes located upstream and downstream of oil sands operations within the Alberta Oil Sands Region (AOSR). Loss-on-ignition and organic carbon and nitrogen elemental analyses were used to differentiate periods of strong and weak Athabasca River flood influence. In addition, the temporal changes in concentrations of bitumen-associated metals vanadium (V) and nickel (Ni) were explored at each lake. A pre-industrial baseline was developed using pre-1967 sediment concentrations of V and Ni, normalized to aluminum concentration, from lakes in the AOSR to estimate the natural range of variability of these metals. When normalized metals concentrations in recently deposited flood-influenced sediment were compared to the pre-industrial baseline, no evidence of enrichment in the river-derived stratigraphic intervals was detected. However, significant enrichment of bitumen-related metals V and Ni (up to 2- and 1.6-fold above the baseline, respectively) was observed in weakly flood-influenced sediment in the two floodplain lakes located closest to the most active mining operations (< 10 km), indicating local atmospheric pollution. Athabasca River sediment data collected by regional monitoring programs RAMP (1997-2002) and JOSM (2012-2014) were examined in the context of the newly developed baselines and showed enrichment of V (1.2-1.7x baseline) and Ni (1.2-2.0x baseline) at some of the river monitoring sites, usually proximal ... |
format |
Master Thesis |
author |
Klemt, Wynona |
author_facet |
Klemt, Wynona |
author_sort |
Klemt, Wynona |
title |
Developing pre-industrial baselines from floodplain lake sediment cores to quantify the extent of metals pollution within the Alberta Oil Sands Region |
title_short |
Developing pre-industrial baselines from floodplain lake sediment cores to quantify the extent of metals pollution within the Alberta Oil Sands Region |
title_full |
Developing pre-industrial baselines from floodplain lake sediment cores to quantify the extent of metals pollution within the Alberta Oil Sands Region |
title_fullStr |
Developing pre-industrial baselines from floodplain lake sediment cores to quantify the extent of metals pollution within the Alberta Oil Sands Region |
title_full_unstemmed |
Developing pre-industrial baselines from floodplain lake sediment cores to quantify the extent of metals pollution within the Alberta Oil Sands Region |
title_sort |
developing pre-industrial baselines from floodplain lake sediment cores to quantify the extent of metals pollution within the alberta oil sands region |
publisher |
University of Waterloo |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10012/14181 |
geographic |
Athabasca River |
geographic_facet |
Athabasca River |
genre |
Athabasca River |
genre_facet |
Athabasca River |
op_relation |
http://hdl.handle.net/10012/14181 |
_version_ |
1766356570607714304 |