Microplastics are a source of environmental pollution resulting from degradation of plastic products and spillage of resin pellets. We report the amounts of microplastics from various sites of Lake Ontario and evaluate their potential for preservation in the sediment record. A total of 4635 pellets were sampled from the Humber Bay shoreline on three sampling dates. Pellet colours were similar t...

Microplastics contamination of Lake Ontario sediments is investigated with the aim of identifying distribution patterns and hotspots in nearshore, tributary and beach depositional environments. Microplastics are concentrated in nearshore sediments in the vicinity of urban and industrial regions. In Humber Bay and Toronto Harbour microplastic concentrations were consistently >500 particles per k...

Sediment oxygen demand (SOD) and hypolimnetic (HOD) drive deep-water dissolved (DO) depletion in lakes, yet these parameters can be difficult to measure routinely. To address this issue, we present an empirical DO model from time-series measurements of water-column temperature profiles estimate hypolimnion thickness (H). The is based on a dataset that includes 3 temperate lakes (Lake Erie, Lake...

Invasive dreissenid mussels (Dreissena polymorpha and Dreissena bugensis) have a profound effect on the total phosphorus (TP) budget in Lake Ontario, which turn influences ecological processes such as resurgence of benthic alga Cladophora. A validated three-dimensional integrated hydrodynamic modeling framework is applied to quantify impact that dreissenids spatial species distribution TP lake....

Organic flame retardants (OFRs) such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and novel halogenated flame retardants (NHFRs) are ubiquitous, persistent, and bioaccumulative contaminants that have been used in consumer goods to slow combustion. In this study, polyethylene passive samplers (PEs) were deployed throughout the lower Great Lakes (Lake Erie and Lake Ontario) to measure OFRs in air an...

The abundance and dispersion of pelagic waterbirds was measured on Lake Ontario during the aftermath of the storm system generated by Hurricane Isabel, September 2003. The purpose of this study was to determine whether standard shipboard methodologies developed for surveying pelagic seabirds from ships on the ocean are applicable on the Laurentian Great Lakes, and if so whether such surveys may...