Brook trout reintroduction program continues:

Mark May 12 on your calendar!

The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources will supply 2000 hatchery-raised fish and volunteers are busy planning a great event. If you were there last year, you’ll know how much fun the kids (and adults) had that day. If you weren’t, don’t miss it this year!

Most of the trout will be released in New Sudbury, where they seemed to do well last summer. We will be expanding the release to Garson and possibly the Frood branch. The latter is where INCO just completed a major project to divert acid and heavy metal contamination away from the creek (see the last issue of the newsletter for more details). Natural flushing should lead to improvements in water quality in this branch starting this spring. Some water quality testing will be done in early spring and trout could be released there if conditions are suitable.

The trout release begins at 10 a.m., at the Twin Forks Playground on Gary Street (off Lasalle). When you register, you may be directed to other sites to release your fish. If you do go elsewhere, be sure to come back to Twin Forks afterwards for the barbeque, which will start at about 11 a.m. The Junction Creek Stewardship Committee will be selling hot dogs, drinks and other treats. Proceeds will help support the restoration of Junction Creek through various initiatives.

The trout that we release will be monitored throughout the summer by researchers at the Laurentian University/Ministry of Natural Resources Cooperative Freshwater Ecology Unit. Some of the results of last summer’s research are found on the next page.

Last year, most of the trout were found fairly close to release sites. It is hoped that as more of Junction Creek is restored, brook trout will spread out further along the waterway.

We hope you will help us track their progress by keeping an eye out for fish you suspect could be brook trout. If you see something, please go to troutwatch to report it

The Great Junction Creek Bug Search

Get your nets ready, kids...for the Great Junction Creek Bug Search.

Benthic macroinvertebrates is a fancy name for creatures that live in the bottom of water bodies such as creeks. Sampling and identifying them is one way to get an idea of how healthy different parts of the creek are. Some creatures are more sensitive to pollutants and other adverse conditions than others, so finding out which types live in which parts of the creek would provide some very useful information.

Jennifer Davidson, a graduate student at Laurentian University, carried out this kind of sampling last fall at a number of sites in the Sudbury area, including some in Junction Creek. Using her results, Jennifer is setting up a simple scoring system, so that anyone can take samples in some part of the creek, identify what they find, and give that section of creek a score indicating how healthy it is.

Bug Search 2001 is in the early planning stages, but the stewardship committee hopes to involve a large number of school children this fall. Each class will go to a section of creek near their school, take samples and identify what they find. We hope sections of Junction Creek across the whole city will be sampled, so we can compile the results on a large colour-coded map, which will be posted on our website and hopefully published in local newspapers. If a creek-wide bug search could be done every year, it would serve as a ‘report card’ on Junction Creek, allowing everyone in Sudbury to track the progress of the restoration project.

One great advantage to this method, besides being a lot of fun, is that it can be done with fairly simple equipment: nets, buckets, magnifying glasses, tweezers and sampling trays. The stewardship committee is seeking funding that would allow us to provide the necessary equipment to the schools. Volunteers will be trained to assist teachers with the field trips.

Focus on the Frood branch

An item in the last issue of the newsletter outlined INCO’s Frood remediation project. The elimination of a major source of acid and heavy metal contamination from the Frood branch prompted a decision by the Junction Creek Stewardship Committee to focus much of our efforts over the next few years in this area.

The map here shows the Nickeldale watershed, which is all the land that drains into the Frood branch. It covers an area of approximately 1500 hectares. The southern tip of the map is near the corner of Notre Dame and Lloyd Street in downtown Sudbury.

Currently, the Frood branch supports very little aquatic life. Beginning this spring, water quality should begin to improve through a natural flushing process. Water quality will be tested in early spring, and some brook trout could be released here if conditions are suitable.

Meanwhile, the Junction Creek Stewardship Committee is planning a number of activities aimed at improving water quality in the Frood branch. We approached the city’s Vegetation Enhancement Technical Advisory Committee, which is responsible for planning the Land Reclamation program, and requested they concentrate as much effort as possible in this watershed.

The Land Reclamation program will plant at least 40,000 trees here in the next two years. Liming will also be carried out in some areas. This will help prevent acid and heavy metals which are stored in soils and wetlands from draining into the creek.

Some tree planting will also be done by volunteers. Marc Hébert, a forestry professor at Collège Boréal, has agreed to supply about six thousand native tree and shrub seedlings over the next two years. Along with some of his students, M. Hébert collects various types of seeds and propagates them in the greenhouse at the college. Some of the species we will likely be planting include sugar maple, silver maple, yellow birch, choke cherry, red oak, red osier dogwood, tamarack and cedar. Collecting seeds is very labour-intensive, so we will be asking volunteers to help with this task, and with planting in both spring and fall.

Liming is also very labour-intensive and relatively expensive, but very beneficial.

Dr. John Gunn has conducted a series of experiments in the Sudbury area to assess the effects of land liming. Treating soil with lime, fertilizer and grass seed not only helps trees and shrubs grow in barren areas, but also results in increased pH and reduced metal concentration of water leaving these areas to enter lakes and streams. Because of the benefits, we hope to obtain funding to support additional liming in the Nickeldale watershed.

The area near the dam is quite barren at the moment. Regreening here will not only improve water quality in the Frood branch, but will also beautify the area, which includes a large tract of public land.

The former Region of Sudbury’s long-term Waterway Park Plan calls for the trail system to be extended from where it currently ends in the Flour Mill area. It will eventually cross Lasalle and continue past the Nickeldale dam. This portion of the trail is not currently on the short-term agenda, but stewardship committee members are encouraging city staff to put it on the priority list.

A number of informal trails already exist and are quite widely used. Linking them with trails to the south would increase accessibility. The stewardship committee is also considering the idea of creating a wetland upstream of the Nickeldale dam. This might include construction of raised viewing areas and interpretive signage to enhance appreciation of the area. Trails could be built to link with those near the dam and beyond. Even planning a wetland project is an expensive undertaking, so we are considering forming a partnership with another organization for that purpose.

Research suggests more shade would help trout restoration

Temperature is a major concern in any urban creek. Like all living things, fish can only survive within a certain range of temperatures. If water temperature is above 20C brook trout stop growing and show other signs of stress. Temperatures above 25C can be lethal to brook trout.

Last summer, Ray Gorzynski was hired through the Laurentian University Cooperative Freshwater Ecology Unit to track the trout that were released last spring. He wanted to find out which sections of creek trout were favouring and note the characteristics of those areas.

The trout were counted using two methods. In wadeable sections (less than a metre deep), he electrofished. This method uses a current high enough to stun the fish for long enough to identify it, without doing any harm to them.

In deeper areas, 15 metre sections of the creek were blocked off using over-sized mesh gill nets, which ensured there would be minimal injury to the trout. Two workers manually drove fish downstream, walking side-by-side in the creek, from one gillnet to the next. After identification, the trout were released.

Trout were captured at five sites. Four of them feature extensive shading from what is called riparian vegetation (trees and other vegetation along the banks of the creek). The fifth trout capture site, east of the Supermall, lacks riparian cover by trees or shrubs, but does have numerous deep pools (more than a metre deep), extensive bank undercuts, and lots of woody debris to provide cover from predators and the sun’s rays. This site also benefits from being only 620 metres downstream from a long stretch (3.2 km) of well-shaded creek, running from Lasalle Blvd. north to Robin Street.

The creek temperature of well-shaded sections of Junction Creek was monitored and consistently remained cooler than the other non-shaded sites. Results are shown on the graphs below, at right.

Impoundments lack shade and have large surface areas exposed to intensive direct sunlight on cloudless days. Parking lots and the reservoirs behind dams are examples of impoundments. Shallow reservoir water allows the sun to penetrate to the bottom, heating it up. The material at the bottom releases the heat slowly, warming the creek water, even at night.

Natural impoundments formed by beaver dams cause the same problem as artificial impoundments and cause elevated creek temperatures before water even enters urbanized areas.

Among other things, the results point out the benefits of riparian vegetation, and suggest efforts would be well spent planting trees and shrubs along less shady segments of creek.

Ray will continue his research this summer. It is funded by INCO Ltd., the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Human Resources Development Canada, and Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Ministry of Environment. Thank yous are also in order for Marcel and Debbie Rheault and Larry and Sheryl Dovigi, who graciously agreed to host rain gauges in their yards. Peter Franola and other staff of Sudbury’s City Operations Department were also extremely helpful, particularly when Ray needed to collect data from the temperature monitors he placed in storm sewers.