All central PA streams doomed?

[troutbert]

afishinado wrote:
FYI. Some facts about New Zealand Mud Snails:

The snail tolerates siltation, thrives in disturbed watersheds, and benefits from high nutrient flows allowing for filamentous green algae growth. It occurs amongst macrophytes and prefers littoral zones in lakes or slow streams with silt and organic matter substrates, but tolerates high flow environments where it can burrow into the sediment.

On PA streams there are some low gradient stretches, i.e. slow streams, with lots of silt.

And there are also areas with faster flows and more rocky substrate, with little silt. There should be less impact in those areas.

Also, filamentous green algae usually grows heavily where the streams are open to the sun, and much less where the streams are well shaded. One more reason to restore riparian lawns back to riparian forest.

 

[JG63]

hmm... assuming i do stay (don't all applaud at once) in my home state after retirement, and fracking proves "safe", and AMD/road runoff/no till farming stops destroying streams, THEN I'll have to come up with a snail pattern to fish at a snails pace to match the hatch! Modern Times Rock and Roll - 😉

 

[addictedangler]

I read your post and agreed with you fishidiot. There are more wild trout in Pa ( central pa included) then I can remember. Acid rain can be treated with limestone devices to keep wild trout stocks until the rain neutralizes in the future. Many high sulphur coal burning plants are gone so it should get better as some data is starting to show. I read who wrote the post after agreeing Dave.

 

[jim_k]

So wait. Snails eat algae? Like Didymo? So we could introduce mud snails to combat didymo, then we can bring in those New Zealand parasitic worms to combat the mud snails (or Irish brown trout). Just like the song "There once was a lady who swallowed a fly..I don't know why she swallowed a fly..I think she'll die"

 

[Sylvaneous]

Yes, but acid rain is way down from what it was. But there is some belief that the effects of previous rain and current levels are continuing to deplete soils; reducing species diversity and tree regeneration. It was a bigger problem. That problem has not disappeared. It may be why , probably IS why some streams that were good in the past, like the East Hickory watershed and lots of other small creeks in the plateau will not support the bugs and fish they once did.
Syl

 

[outsider]

Paved Paradise and put up a parking lot............

Funny Mike, or it's the end of the world as we know it.........

 

[troutbert]

Here is the PFBC press release on the topic:
http://fishandboat.com/newsreleases/2013press/new-zealand-mudsnail.htm

 

[jdaddy]

Sylvaneous wrote:
Yes, but acid rain is way down from what it was.

Boy, as Afishinado points out, there is a blast from the past. Acid rain. A "problem" that was hyped beyond reason as evidenced by the fact that it was "solved" years and billions of dollars ahead of time.

Bad news here is that snails are very sensitive to acidity so reduction of acidity has increased their ability to survive and thrive. Catch 22 imo.

 

[pcray1231]

As troutbert said, acid rain has been extremely damaging. And it's not "solved", although, it has been "improved" I guess, in that we're causing damage at a slower rate today than we used to.

The effect on watersheds is a cumulative effect based on the total amount of acid added to the watershed. So, we're adding acid at a slower rate than we used to, but still adding nonetheless. There's still work to be done. What has been accomplished was mostly do to advanced in scrubber technology at coal power plants, and the more recent improvements are mostly due to actually shutting down those coal plants in favor of natural gas fired electricity generation.

As it was expected, it has had a negative effect over a large number of freestoners. What's been interesting is to observe how much greater an effect it had on some, while other seemingly identical streams suffered only minor effects. And yes, that's largely based on geology.

 

[Chaz]

Acid rain has been here for a long time and went undetected. In the 70's and 80's, at its height the acid rain was as low as 3.7 ph, and is now around 4.5 ph. that is still lethal to nearly everything in our streams. It will not go away soon, but it can be controlled with treatment of streams,
There are 2 types of treatment, passive and active. In a passive treatment limestone sand is dumped into the receiving streams and the sand does it's work. Active treatment is a well or series of wells are built and stream water is piped or channeled to the well that is filled with limestone, the water flows over the limestone and out of the well into the receiving stream.
Some streams have both types of treatment, but usually it's one or the other.
As long as there are coal fired power plants we'll have acid rain. The one positive is that when a plant gets upgraded it is required to get scrubbers installed to limit acid deposition. It was once thought the deposition was far from the source, we now know it can be quite close. PA still has the highest incidence of acid rain and the lowest ph rain as far as I know.
Buffering that has been lost in regions that have acid rain is lost for a very long time, longer than any of us will be alive, so buffering is an ongoing problem. You can help by writing to your politicians when the topics of clean air and water are being discussed, especially if industry wants regulations relaxed. Clean air and water are the key to cleaning up the effects of acid rain. A clean environment is good for the economy. There are a lot of studies out there that prove it.

 

[k-bob]

right, very local effects of acid rain w/ geology. (I believe unimpaired streams have about 6.5 ph):


Sci Total Environ. 2008 Apr 15;393(2-3):249-61. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2007.12.026. Epub 2008 Feb 6.

"Groundtruthing and potential for predicting acid deposition impacts in headwater streams using bedrock geology, GIS, angling, and stream chemistry.

Kirby CS1, McInerney B, Turner MD.

Abstract

Atmospheric acid deposition is of environmental concern worldwide, and the determination of impacts in remote areas can be problematic. Rainwater in central Pennsylvania, USA, has a mean pH of approximately 4.4. Bedrock varies dramatically in its ability to neutralize acidity. A GIS database simplified reconnaissance of non-carbonate bedrock streams in the Valley and Ridge Province and identified potentially chronically impacted headwater streams, which were sampled for chemistry and brook trout. Stream sites (n=26) that originate in and flow through the Tuscarora had a median pH of 5.0 that was significantly different from other formations. Shawangunk streams (n=6) and non-Tuscarora streams (n=20) had a median pH of 6.0 and 6.3, respectively. Mean alkalinity for non-Tuscarora streams (2.6 mg/L CaCO(3)) was higher than the mean for Tuscarora streams (0.5 mg/L). Lower pH and alkalinity suggest that the buffering capability of the Tuscarora is inferior to that of adjacent sandstones. Dissolved aluminum concentrations were much higher for Tuscarora streams (0.2 mg/L; approximately the lethal limit for brook trout) than for non-Tuscarora streams (0.03 mg/L) or Shawangunk streams (0.02 mg/L). Hook-and-line methods determined the presence/absence of brook trout in 47 stream reaches with suitable habitat. Brook trout were observed in 21 of 22 non-Tuscarora streams, all 6 Shawangunk streams, and only 9 of 28 Tuscarora stream sites. Carefully-designed hook-and-line sampling can determine the presence or absence of brook trout and help confirm biological impacts of acid deposition. 15% of 334 km of Tuscarora stream lengths are listed as "impaired" due to atmospheric deposition by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. 65% of the 101 km of Tuscarora stream lengths examined in this study were impaired."

so streams in Tuscarora bedrock may be hit harder by acid rain... so where's the Tuscarora bedrock? see the map here, for ex parts of NW Union county:

http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/kirby/BUHWStreamStudy.pdf

fwiw, I tried to eyeball a nat repro map of a tuscarora geology area. not as many small streams with blue lines as you might guess...

 

[k-bob]

fwiw, another Tuscarora bedrock area, Lycoming/Union boundary.

 

[troutbert]

If anyone is interested in exploring one of these streams, check out the headwaters of Swift Run, Union Cty.

http://tinyurl.com/k6oe2o2

At this webpage there's a map. Park at the picnic area shown. Walk upstream past the small tributary shown on the map. Below that trib there are trout.

But once you get upstream from that tributary about 100 feet or so, and start walking up into the roadless headwaters, there are none. And very little in the way of insect life.

 

[k-bob]

that area in exc dncr geology map

 

[k-bob]

another area, this one in Snyder... hills look trouty, but not many on nat repro, bedrock is tuscarora (green)

 

[boychick]

These problems sadden me. I knew it was a matter of time before invasive species found there way to central PA, but I kept hoping it wouldn't happen for a long time. The acid rain issue is one thing I haven't thought about for a long time. I know its an issue, and has been worse than it is now, but I don't pay much attention to it. It has always seemed that acid mine drainage was the real problem acid related problem for PA streams.

 

[k-bob]

well the article above suggests that areas with low-alkalinity Tuscarora bedrock will have worse acidity in streams, so they may be less likely to have trout. I looked at some areas with that bedrock ... tuscarora bedrock areas are in lime green below (for ex, SE of Williamsport and just S of Middleburg).

Most PA ridges have different bedrock, so maybe more brookies... For ex, the article above says some non-Tuscarora streams had median pH of 6.3, and streams w/no acid rain effect might be 6.5 pH... still, I have fished in some of these tuscarora bedrock areas, will try to consider this issue in this part of the state.

 

[pcray1231]

AMD pretty much completely kills a stream, but affects only 5% of streams or so.

Acid rain has less severe effects but harms a far greater number of streams, and because it's non-point pollution, is harder to isolate and treat.

 

[pcray1231]

Thanks Bob, interesting stuff, you know I like to get into that kind of thing.

 

[troutbert]

Besides Swift Run, another stream in the region is the headwaters of Middle Creek. west of Pleasant Grove.

The stream originates and flows about 4 miles through Bald Eagle State forest. The surroundings and watershed are forested. But PFBC surveys and surveys by the people at Bucknell found no trout.

It's a similar situation, a stream originating and flowing through Tuscarora geology, weakly buffered, so the ph and alkalinity are very low.

After studying these streams, Dr. Carl Kirby from Bucknell initiated a liming project in the headwaters of Buffalo Creek, and reports are that there are a few brookies there now.

There was an article about this in Trout magazine and in PA Trout newsletter. The return of the brookies there is good news but the article said the ponds may only work for 20 years, so it doesn't sound like a long term solution.