Region: North America
From coast to coast to coast, the Canadian environment is being subjected to a variety of stresses and continuous change in the physical and chemical characteristics of our atmosphere. How these changes will alter the biological components of ecosystems is a major concern to Canadians, because large parts of our economy are based on the sustainable use of our fisheries, forestry and agricultural resources.
While some of the stressors and changes are due to natural processes, many are the result of collective human behaviour. The effects of human-induced changes can be reduced or eliminated by appropriate pollution control and resource management policies. Environmental issues have become more scientifically complex and the appropriate control programs can be costly and socially disruptive, so it is necessary to provide all Canadians with more comprehensive and reliable scientific information than has been needed when dealing with less complicated problems in the past. This requires long-term, multi-disciplinary studies at individual sites plus the ability to compose data from sites in different locations.
The Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1997, gives the authority for Environment Canada to “establish, operate, and maintain a system for monitoring environmental quality”. In addition, the Act allows for Environment Canada to conduct a wide range of research and study on pollution prevention and ecological effects of contaminants, leading to the formulation of plans for pollution prevention and/or pollution abatement. These studies may be carried out in cooperation with a wide range of partners including other Governmental organizations within Canada, foreign Governments and Aboriginal people. The information gathered from monitoring may be published in a number of forms including periodic reports on the state of the Canadian environment.
Further to the Act, many of the international conventions and protocols, to which Canada is a party, also call for the conduct of monitoring and periodic assessments of environmental condition.
Understanding how ecosystems are changing and developing the scientific information required by decision-makers, are beyond the resources and abilities of any single Department or agency. Consequently, it is necessary to develop partnerships within all components of the Canadian and International environmental science community. This is necessary to maximize the quality of the science and the efficiency of conducting the work at a time of economic restraint.
It is against this backdrop of meeting the environmental challenges that Environment Canada has enhanced its coordinating capabilities to promote and assist in mobilizing a collective Canadian scientific effort. This program has four overall objectives:
1. To provide a national perspective on how the health of Canadian ecosystems are being affected by the multitude of stresses on the environment; 2. an early warning system that identifies new ecosystem changes as they emerge; 3. To provide consistent nation-wide, scientifically defensible rationales and information related to the success of, or need for, controls and other resource management initiatives; 4. To evaluate and report to Canadians on the effectiveness of these policies.
The following list illustrates some of the ecological stresses that are occurring.
* The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has been increasing exponentially for the last hundred years and this seems certain to continue into the foreseeable future.
* Ultra-violet B radiation is increasing as a result of stratospheric ozone depletion, and even under the most optimistic international control scenarios, it is believed that ozone depletion will increase for the next five years and the ozone layer will not be back to normal conditions until some time after the year 2020.
* Large areas of Canada are subjected to increased deposition of nitrogen from burning of fossil fuels and agricultural activities.
* Parts of eastern Canada also receive high levels of sulphate deposition, and the combination of sulphate and nitrogen results in acid rain falling on acid sensitive soils from Ontario eastward to Newfoundland.
* Increasing land-use changes by humans in resource extraction and human settlement
* the elevated levels of methylmercury (MeHg) in fish and the subsequent risks these concentrations pose to human and environmental health.
EMAN is a network of people from a multitude of agencies and communities working at long-term, multidisciplinary environmental research and monitoring sites located across Canada, with the objective of understanding what changes are occurring in the ecosystems and why. It is coupled strongly to the work of other environmental monitoring networks and to the EMAN Observation Programs which are community monitoring initiatives designed for the public to monitor their local environment. The Network is building on existing sites which have been established over the years for a number of reasons. For example, the Last Mountain Lake site was established in 1887 as a National Wildlife Area. The Experimental Lakes Area in Ontario was set up in the 1960s to conduct whole lake manipulation experiments on the causes of lake eutrophication. Studies at Kejimkujik National Park, also began in the 60s, looking at nutrient processes in surface waters and in the mid 1970s, the Ontario Ministry of Housing established the Research Centre at Dorset to study the effects of cottage development on lakes. Many other new sites have been established across the country to look at a variety of research questions and environmental factors. As new issues have emerged, other sites, for example, Turkey Lakes in Ontario and Duschenay in Quebec, were established in response to the need for more information on acid rain.
As of the end of 1999, about 100 case study sites are included in the EMAN Network. Each site is characterized by long-term studies, although not all sites have a full suite of multidisciplinary activities. EMAN’s products are based on interjurisdictional and interdisciplinary collaborations to produce integrated information about ecosystems. Study sites within the same ecozone are grouped into Ecological Science Cooperatives so that all work undertaken can contribute to understanding what is changing in the ecozone and why. Environment Canada is the coordinating partner for the network.
Details of the site locations and other relevant information can be found on the Website at http://www.cciw.ca/eman/ or by contacting the EMAN Coordinating Office at (905) 336-4414.