Massena Great Lakes Area of Concern moving towards environmental recovery

Ann Arbor, Mich. —The St. Lawrence River at Massena Area of Concern (AOC) is recovering from decades of impact from heavy industry and the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway and a hydropower dam that both opened in 1958. Wetlands were heavily impacted most by development in the Massena region.

“Wetlands are incredibly important ecosystems that provide habitat for both terrestrial and aquatic species. We are interested to know how wetlands in the AOC have fared since efforts to restore the chemically-contaminated and habitat-altered AOC began in the mid-1990s,” said Clarkson University doctoral student Kinga Stryszowska.

The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between the United States and Canada is a treaty obligation to mitigate recognized environmental impairments at AOCs across the Great Lakes region. Stryszowska and Clarkson University professors Tom Langen and Michael Twiss evaluated the habitat quality and wildlife communities of freshwater wetlands within the Massena AOC by examining whether these wetlands differed in environmental quality from wetlands in an adjacent region that was not impacted by the development along the St. Lawrence River at Massena.

In the spring and summer of 2012, over 40 separate indicators of wetland biodiversity, water quality and landscape context were measured. No difference in environmental quality between wetlands in Massena and comparable wetlands outside the AOC was detected, which shows that the area has undergone ecosystem recovery. Since wetlands in the AOC were generally smaller than reference wetlands, efforts to promote expansion of wetland size may be desirable.

“This research answers many unresolved questions about how wetlands responded to the environmental impacts and will help Massena and other people concerned with Great Lakes AOCs understand how to move forward to facilitate wetland recovery and conservation,” said Stryszowska.

Original Publication Information

Results of this study, "Evaluating Beneficial Use Impairments in wetlands of the Massena Area of Concern using biotic, water quality, and landscape indicators," are reported by Kinga M. Stryszowska, Michael R. Twiss, and Tom A. Langena in Volume 42, Issue 3 of the Journal of Great Lakes Research, published by Elsevier, 2016.

Contacts

For more information about the study, contact Kinga Stryszowska, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY 13699; [email protected].

For information about the Journal of Great Lakes Research, contact Stephanie Guildford, Scientific Co-Editor, Large Lakes Observatory, University Minnesota Duluth, 2205 East Fifth Street, Duluth, Minnesota, 55812-2401; [email protected]; (218) 726-8064.