Grant: Strategic Projects Supplemental Competition

Trace metals in the environment may provide benefits or risks to aquatic life and humans. They can arise naturally, or result partly or wholly from man-made pollution. The distribution and fate of metals in the natural waters depend on nature and concentration of metals but also on physical and chemical forms of metals. Whereas the total concentration of metals is routinely measured, it is not a reliable indicator of solubility and toxicity. Rather, it is necessary to determine the physicochemical forms of toxic element because different forms of the same metal can range from essential to innocuous to strongly toxic. To protect our environment properly, we need to learn more about metal speciation and monitor both metal speciation and metal bioavailability. Over the past years, Athabasca oil sands development has been intensified and present new challenges for the environmental management. There is growing concern regarding the water quality in the Athabasca River watershed and its impacts on aquatic life and human health. High concentrations of metals as well as naphthenic acids are naturally found in bitumen and may lead to major destruction if released into the aquatic environment. In this project, we will establish for the first time metal speciation at non-point and point source pollution in the Athabasca River watershed. The potential influence of oil sands activities on natural metal speciation will be investigated. We plan to develop and apply metal speciation modelling approach to assess the metal speciation and bioavailability in the Athabasca River watershed. The model will be used to predict the future effects of growing activities on metal fate and distribution and their ecological risks in the oil sands region.