Lakes appear to be better at neutralizing wildlife-threatening acid rain than previously thought, researchers reported Wednesday.
A team of Oregon scientists said their study of 36 lakes in New York's Adirondack Mountains found the lakes had generally grown more acid during the industrial era, but the increase appears smaller than previous researchers had estimated.Acid rain - highly acidic industrial pollutants in rainwater or snow - can cause an environmental imbalance when it enters lakes, rivers and forests, and may kill aquatic life.
In a study published in the journal Nature, a team headed by Timothy Sullivan of E&S Environmental Chemistry Inc. of Corvallis, Ore., analyzed fossilized plankton and algae in lake surface sediments to reconstruct the water chemistry of the Adirondack lakes before 1850, when the widespread burning of coal and other fossil fuels began.
When researchers compared their 1850 estimates with samples of current lake water, they found evidence of "widespread recent acidification." However, the changes were smaller than in previous studies.
"Apparently lake chemistry has been less responsive to acidic atmospheric inputs and watershed and/or in-lake neutralization processes have been of greater importance than was generally assumed," the scientists wrote.