Abstract
Surveys of fish populations were conducted on 74 lakes of the Outaouais hydrographic region during the summers of 1985 and 1986 to assess the potential impact of acidity on ichtyologic fauna. Results show that species diversity declined with the increasing acidity. The color of water does not seem to mitigate the adverse effects of acidity. On the contrary, the number of species decreased similarly in both brown lakess (>30 Hazen) and clear lakes (≤30 Hazen) with the increase of acidity. The species tolerance threshold levels to acidity show that 72% of fish species are no longer captured when pH reaches 5.0, compared to 32% at pH ≤5.5. The pH range 5.0 to 5.5 can possibly be regarded as the break point for the occurrence of most fish species in this area. Analysis of the size frequency distributions show that recruitment failures have occurred in acidic waters for walleye and lake trout. We have estimated that anthropogenic acidification is responsible for the loss of more than 10000 fish populations in the Outaouais area.
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