Temporal variations in turbidity in an oil sands pit lake

Tedford, Edmund W.; Halferdahl, Geoff; Pieters, Roger; Lawrence, Gregory A.

doi:10.1007/s10652-018-9632-6

Cited by 35 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 21 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…These tailings are commonly referred to either as fluid fine tailings, or simply mud. The lake exhibits seasonal thermal stratification similar to that of natural dimictic lakes, and ice-cover is typically from November to April (inclusive) also similar to natural lakes in the region (Tedford et al 2019a).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 86%

Impact of atmospheric pressure variations on methane ebullition and lake turbidity during ice‐cover

Zhao

Tedford

Zare

et al. 2021

Limnol Oceanogr Letters

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Methane ebullition from ice-covered lakes is an important contributor to atmospheric greenhouse gases. Ebullition can also have a negative impact on lake water quality. However, despite the global abundance of seasonally ice-covered lakes, there is a lack of continuous, high-frequency ebullition data during ice-cover, and consequently the factors controlling ebullition are unknown. We have collected a 1-month, high frequency record of ebullition using an autonomous echo sounder mounted below the ice. The record shows that ebullition occurs almost exclusively when atmospheric pressure drops below a threshold that is approximately equal to the long-term average pressure. The ebullition intensity is proportional to the amount by which the pressure drops below this threshold. We also show that episodic ebullition events are the cause of previously unexplained turbidity fluctuations.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 86%

Impact of atmospheric pressure variations on methane ebullition and lake turbidity during ice‐cover

Zhao

Tedford

Zare

et al. 2021

Limnol Oceanogr Letters

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“…Oxygen penetration into the water is comparable to natural lakes in the Northern Alberta region, and heavy metal and hydrocarbon contaminations levels have returned to levels that are well within water quality guidelines and compare to undisturbed lakes in the local area [64]. However, salinity is projected to be a risk for decades to come [64] and, due to the mixing processes common to boreal forest lakes, the water cap experiences high turbidity in the spring [65]. Studies of bacterial community structures in Base Mine Lake and other tailings pond reclamation sites in the region have shown robust bacterial communities, and there are diverse communities of bacteria present in reclamation sites contributing to nutrient cycling [66].…”

Section: Protists and Oil Sands Reclamationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microbial Eukaryotes in Oil Sands Environments: Heterotrophs in the Spotlight

Richardson

Dacks

2019

Microorganisms

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Hydrocarbon extraction and exploitation is a global, trillion-dollar industry. However, for decades it has also been known that fossil fuel usage is environmentally detrimental; the burning of hydrocarbons results in climate change, and environmental damage during extraction and transport can also occur. Substantial global efforts into mitigating this environmental disruption are underway. The global petroleum industry is moving more and more into exploiting unconventional oil reserves, such as oil sands and shale oil. The Albertan oil sands are one example of unconventional oil reserves; this mixture of sand and heavy bitumen lying under the boreal forest of Northern Alberta represent one of the world’s largest hydrocarbon reserves, but extraction also requires the disturbance of a delicate northern ecosystem. Considerable effort is being made by various stakeholders to mitigate environmental impact and reclaim anthropogenically disturbed environments associated with oil sand extraction. In this review, we discuss the eukaryotic microbial communities associated with the boreal ecosystem and how this is affected by hydrocarbon extraction, with a particular emphasis on the reclamation of tailings ponds, where oil sands extraction waste is stored. Microbial eukaryotes, or protists, are an essential part of every global ecosystem, but our understanding of how they affect reclamation is limited due to our fledgling understanding of these organisms in anthropogenically hydrocarbon-associated environments and the difficulties of studying them. We advocate for an environmental DNA sequencing-based approach to determine the microbial communities of oil sands associated environments, and the importance of studying the heterotrophic components of these environments to gain a full understanding of how these environments operate and thus how they can be integrated with the natural watersheds of the region.

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“…There is a clear boundary between the sedimented tailings material (called sediment in this text) and the water cap. BML behaves as a typical boreal dimictic lake with summer and winter stratification periods separated by spring and fall turnover events (8,9). Solvents used in bitumen extraction, and to a lesser extent bitumen itself, are substrates for methanogenesis (10)(11)(12).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seasonal Dynamics of Methanotrophic Bacteria in a Boreal Oil Sands End Pit Lake

Albakistani

Nwosu

Furgason

et al. 2022

Appl Environ Microbiol

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Base Mine Lake (BML) is the first full-scale demonstration end pit lake for the oil sands mining industry in Canada. We examined aerobic methanotrophic bacteria over all seasons for five years in this dimictic lake. Methanotrophs comprised up to 58% of all bacterial reads in 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing analyses (median 2.8%), and up to 2.7 × 10 4 cells mL −1 of water (median 0.5 × 10 3 ) based on qPCR of pmoA genes. Methanotrophic activity and populations in the lake water were highest during fall turnover, and remained high through the winter ice-covered period into spring turnover. They declined during summer stratification, especially in the epilimnion. Three methanotroph genera ( Methylobacter , Methylovulum , and Methyloparacoccus ) cycled seasonally, based on both relative and absolute abundance measurements. Methylobacter and Methylovulum populations peaked in winter/spring, when methane oxidation activity was psychrophilic. Methyloparacoccus populations increased in the water column through summer and fall, when methane oxidation was mesophilic, and also predominated in the underlying tailings sediment. Other, less abundant genera grew primarily during summer, possibly due to distinct CH 4 /O 2 microniches created during thermal stratification. These data are consistent with temporal and spatial niche differentiation based on temperature, CH 4 and O 2 . This pit lake displays methane cycling and methanotroph population dynamics similar to natural boreal lakes. Importance statement: The study examined methanotrophic bacteria in an industrial end pit lake, combining molecular DNA methods (both quantitative and descriptive) with biogeochemical measurements. The lake was sampled over 5 years, in all four seasons, as often as weekly, and included sub-ice samples. The resulting multi-season and multi-year dataset is unique in its size and intensity, and allowed us to document clear and consistent seasonal patterns of growth and decline of three methanotroph genera ( Methylobacter , Methylovulum , and Methyloparacoccus ). Laboratory experiments suggested that one major control of this succession was niche partitioning based on temperature. The study helps to understand microbial dynamics in engineered end-pit lakes, but we propose that the dynamics are typical of boreal stratified lakes, and widely applicable in microbial ecology and limnology. Methane oxidising bacteria are important model organisms in microbial ecology, and have implications for global climate change.

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Temporal variations in turbidity in an oil sands pit lake

Cited by 35 publications

References 21 publications

Impact of atmospheric pressure variations on methane ebullition and lake turbidity during ice‐cover

Impact of atmospheric pressure variations on methane ebullition and lake turbidity during ice‐cover

Microbial Eukaryotes in Oil Sands Environments: Heterotrophs in the Spotlight

Seasonal Dynamics of Methanotrophic Bacteria in a Boreal Oil Sands End Pit Lake

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