Nearby Land Research Articles

The Impact Of Urbanization on Water Quality and Riparian Land Cover Change in the Grand River Watershed

The research topic of my paper is the impact of urbanization on water quality and riparian land cover change in the Grand River watershed. Urban expansion could have unpredictable impacts on natural environment and resources. This watershed is comprised of lots of major rivers and tributaries in Canada which are significant hydrological resources to humans and nature, so it plays important roles in providing nearby residences water use and land irrigation. The watershed contains two First Nation territories and a total of 39 municipalities, including larger cities like Waterloo, Kitchener, Guelph, and Cambridge (GRCA 2008), so rapid urbanization could be one of the factors to degrade water quality and the underwater ecosystem. Moreover, due to the water quality change of the water, the riparian area land cover can correspondingly change over the years. Therefore, this study will mainly focus on studying water quality trends from 2000 to 2020, and data is collected from 12 water monitoring stations near the large cities in the watershed. The water quality will be defined by parameters like pH, temperature, conductivity, turbidity, and other chemical elements. The land cover layer of 2000 and 2020 will be used to compare the riparian land cover change, illustrating the spatial relationship of urban expansion and riparian area with significant land cover change. Furthermore, more discussions will focus on if the riparian land cover change is closely related to water quality degradation caused by urbanization. The final deliverable would be presented by ArcGIS pro layouts and statistic charts.

Offshore murtoos indicate warm-based Fennoscandian ice-sheet conditions during the Bølling warming in the northern Gulf of Riga, Baltic Sea

Glacial landforms provide invaluable information on the dynamics and extent of past ice sheets. In planform view, murtoos are triangular-shaped subglacial landforms that have recently been described from areas previously covered by the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet and whose formation has been linked to meltwater activity. We document the first occurrence of offshore murtoos and associated eskers in a high-resolution multibeam and sub-bottom profile dataset from the northern Gulf of Riga, Baltic Sea. In this study area, the murtoos appear to be longer (range 43–748 m), narrower (range 12–394 m) and less high (range 0.5–7.8 m), on average, compared to those previously reported on land, although this may be partly due to post-glacial sediments that smooth the present-day seafloor topography and may have buried smaller murtoos. The direction of murtoo longitudinal axes suggests a local NNE–SSW paleo-ice stream direction. In sub-bottom boomer profiles, the murtoos are characterized by moderate amplitude, sub-parallel discontinuous internal reflectors, indicating a varying sandy diamicton and sand composition, which is compatible with the previously interpreted mode of deposition by pulsed subglacial meltwater flow. Eskers that are found in close association with the murtoos are shorter (mean length 538 m) and more curved than their counterparts on nearby land areas, and they lack a general alignment. In boomer profiles, the eskers are characterized by low-amplitude, sub-parallel continuous reflectors, suggesting a better-sorted sandy composition. The curved and poorly aligned external form of the eskers suggests deposition under restricted subglacial drainage conditions. We conclude that murtoos and related landforms in the northern Gulf of Riga were formed during the Bølling warming at ca. 14.5–14.1 cal kyr BP, when large amounts of meltwater were delivered to the ice-sheet bed.

Spatially explicit modeling of disease surveillance in mixed oak-hardwood forests based on machine-learning algorithms

Incidences of disease, dieback, decline or mortality, some of which induced or enhanced by climate change, threaten the sustainability of forest stands in many ecosystems. Spatially explicit prediction of disease onset remains challenging, however, due to the involvement of several causative agents. In this paper, we developed a generic framework based on machine-learning algorithms and spatial analyses for landscape-level prediction of oak disease outbreaks caused by the charcoal fungus Biscogniauxia mediterranea in a mixed-oak forest of Mediterranean climate. For prediction, we used a set of fifteen causative factors as a cross-function of soil, site and stand-related predictors. A total of 80 sample plots, including 1134 affected trees, were surveyed and used for the modeling process at the 5600-ha landscape level of the southern Zagros, Iran, where the disease occurs in roughly 25% of forest lands. Ten machine learning algorithms were explored and the performance of each algorithm to predict oak disease outbreak was evaluated. The modeling framework used maximum entropy to remove the least influential variables and build the status-quo management scenario to which the results of the prediction models were compared. Results showed that the random forests algorithm (AUC = 0.96: Precision = 0.71: Accuracy = 0.90: F-Measure = 0.70) achieved significantly better results than the status-quo management (Precision = 0.13: Accuracy = 0.67: F-Measure = 0.12) and any other algorithm. Soil chemical properties (NPK, organic carbon and EC) and landform predictors (slope, distance to roads, and TWI) were major forecasters of oak disease outbreak identified by the random forest algorithm. Geostatistical analysis enabled the creation of a map that identified sites at higher risk of infestation, allowing epidemiologists and forest managers to find sites likely to be infested. Consequently, financial resources can be allocated and management practices such as sanitation felling treatments applied across large forest landscapes to minimize the risk of spread and severity to uninfested high-value trees on nearby or adjacent land zones that are in the early stage of epidemics.

Four decades of regional wet deposition, local bulk deposition, and stream-water chemistry show the influence of nearby land use on forested streams in Central Appalachia

Hydrologic monitoring began on two headwater streams (<1 km2) on the University of Kentucky's Robinson Forest in 1971. We evaluated stream-water (1974–2013) and bulk-deposition (wet + dust) (1984–2013) chemistry in the context of regional wet-deposition patterns that showed decreases in both sulfate and nitrate concentrations as well as proximal surface-mine expansion. Decadal time steps (1974–83, 1984–93, 1994–2003, 2004–2013) were used to quantify change. Comparison of the first two decades showed similarly decreased sulfate (minimum flow-adjusted annual-mean concentration of ≈13.5 mg/L in 1982 to 8.8 mg/L in 1992) and increased pH (6.6–6.8) in both streams, reflecting contemporaneous changes in both bulk and wet deposition. In contrast, concentrations of nitrate (0.14 to >0.25 mg/L) and base cations increased between these two decades, coinciding with expansion of surface mining between 1985 and 1995. In 2004, stream-water pH (6.7 in 2004), sulfate (9.2 mg/L), and nitrate (>0.11 mg/L) were similar to 1982, despite wet-deposition concentrations being lower. Base-cation concentrations were higher in the stream adjacent to ongoing surface mining relative to the stream situated near the middle of the experimental forest. However, pH decreased to approximately 5.7 by 2013 for both streams, which, combined with a shift in dominant cations from calcium to magnesium and potassium, indicates that the soil-buffering capacity of this landscape has been exceeded. Ratios of bulk deposition and stream-water concentrations indicate enrichment of sulfate (1.7–25.2) and cations (0.5–64.8), but not nitrogen (0.1–5.6), indicating that the Forest is not nitrogen saturated and that ongoing changes in water-quality are sulfate driven. When concentrations were adjusted to account for changes in streamflow (climate) over the 4 decades, external influences (land management/regulation) explained most change. The amount and direction of change differed among constituents, both between consecutive decades and between the first and last decades, reflecting the influence of localized surface mining even as regional wet deposition continued to improve due to the Clean Air Act. The implication is that localized stressors have the potential to out-pace the benefits of national environmental policies for communities that depend on local water-resources in similar environments.

Occurrence of octylphenol and nonylphenol in the sediment of South China Sea and Malacca Strait, Peninsular Malaysia.

Sediment is the ultimate reservoir of effluent from landmasses. This includes octylphenol (OP) and nonylphenol (NP), two chemical compounds which are known with the ability to disrupt the normal functions of hormones in the organism. To our knowledge, no study of these compounds in the marine sediment of Malaysia has been published to date. Hence, this study presents the level of OP and NP in the sediment of the South China Sea and Malacca Strait, Malaysia. The extraction of compounds was done using the liquid-liquid extraction method and followed by clean-up using solid-phase extraction cartridges. The range of OP in Malacca Strait (1.00-27.16ng/g dw) was greater than in the South China Sea (5.12-14.16ng/g dw) whereas a similar range of NP was found in the South China Sea (1.32-23.76ng/g dw) and Malacca Strait (0.79-27.59ng/g dw). The concentration of both compounds was consistently high near Redang Island (E2A) and Penang (W32 and W43) suggesting continuous input of these chemicals from this nearby land. Risk quotient (RQ) values of OP showed the potential risk to benthic communities in 4/7 and 21/47 sampling points of the respective South China Sea and Malacca Strait. Both water bodies are located far from the wastewater effluent and yet able to retain these chemicals in their sediment. This suggests that the wastewater treatment system as well as dilution effects do not prevent these chemicals to be ended up in the marine environment.

Land Use Land Cover (LULC) and Surface Water Quality Assessment in and around Selected Dams of Jharkhand using Water Quality Index (WQI) and Geographic Information System (GIS)

Abstract Surface water quality deterioration is mainly occurring due to anthropogenic activities at an alarming rate in developing countries. Jharkhand has been undergoing exponential urbanisation and mining, causing immense surface water pollution and water stress. The state is heavily dependent on artificial dams for its daily water supply demands. Therefore, an effort is made to monitor and ascertain the surface water quality and the influence of nearby land use pattern on water quality, in the selected five dams, namely, Hatia dam, Kanke dam, Getalsud dam, Galudih barrage, and Chandil dam are done. These dams are built on the Subarnarekha river basin, located in the Jharkhand state on a seasonal basis and associated land use land cover (LULC) changes, changes in vegetation cover using normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) and water body changes using normalised difference water index (NDWI) that have occurred in a 5-year gap i.e. 2016 and 2021. The secondary data for the year 2016 was obtained from the Jharkhand pollution control board report published by the government of Jharkhand, India. For the year 2021, the samples were collected from sampling sites for pre, post and monsoon seasons. The chemical analysis of collected water samples was done in the laboratory for parameters like pH, dissolved oxygen, biological oxygen demand, total calcium and magnesium, hardness, total dissolved and suspended solids, alkalinity, chlorine etc. and compared with the standard values prescribed by world health organisation (WHO) and Indian standards (IS) 10500:2012. The seasonal water quality status was analysed using the water quality index (WQI) for the pre, post and monsoon seasons of 2016 and 2021. Then, the use of supervised classification method for land use land cover (LULC), normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) and normalised difference water index (NDWI) was opted to understand the relation between the change in water quality and quantity concerning its land use and land cover, by comparison of results from the year 2016 to 2021. LULC were found using the supervised maximum likelihood classification method in ArcGIS and its accuracy was checked using the kappa accuracy method, which was found to be varying from 87 to 95% for all sites. The results showed that the overall water quality varied from good to poor indicating that it can be used for human activities but may need pre-treatment before drinking. NDWI showed a massive increase in severe drought areas for Hatia, Kanke, Chandil and Galudih barrage, whereas moderate drought regions increased for Hatia, Getalsud, and Kanke. NDVI showed dense and moderate vegetation both decreased massively for all the dam sites indicating an alarming situation and the need to adopt better land management practices.

Riding against the Past

Riding against the Past

A spatial and temporal assessment of energy development around wilderness areas

Global efforts to protect biodiversity have fallen short and global threats, including energy development, are prevalent. Assessing impacts of energy development helps determine if protected areas, particularly wilderness areas, can conserve biodiversity, natural habitats, and sustain ecological processes inherent in ecosystems. We quantified the amount of energy development around wilderness areas, evaluated rate of change in energy development, assessed if nearby public land provides a safeguard from energy development, and identified wilderness areas surrounded by the most energy development. We compiled national and regional data on non-renewable and renewable energy development. Across all wilderness areas, 52.8 % had ≥1 power plant or coal mine nearby. More renewable energy power plants occur around wilderness areas than non-renewable. Among all energy leases, oil and gas and wind power leases occur most often around wilderness areas. During 1990–2015, the number of oil and gas wells around wilderness areas increased by 43.5 %. Wilderness areas surrounded by >75 % public land were as likely to have a power plant or coal mine nearby as those with <25 % public land. Wilderness areas ranked highest for number of power plants or coal mines nearby occurred mostly (77 %) in the western U.S. With the continued demand for energy, wilderness areas will continue to be influenced by energy development. Our research can inform the stewardship of wilderness areas and shows that despite their remote location and strong legal protection, wilderness areas are threatened by the increasing presence of energy development in surrounding lands.

Isolation of AM Fungi from Rhizospheric Soil and Assessing Their Potential in Revegetating the Mining Wasteland of Gujarat using Inoculated Trees Saplings

Fluorspar (CaF2), is a common mineral, occurring in green, purple, yellow, or colorless crystals, which is used in metallurgy and makinga variety of chemicals used in refrigeration. Kadipani in Gujarat has large deposits of this ore. Open cast mining by GMDC has resultedin disturbed ecology. Earlier the efforts have been made by the forest department to grow tree species, in order to restore the forestecosystem, but the plants grew slowly and with stunted morphology and scanty survival. The obligate fungal symbionts known asarbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) present in plants play a key factor supporting plant growth in stressed conditions. Therefore, AMFstrains were first isolated from mining area and were used to raise the saplings first in polybags. Then after 75 days these were used forrevegetating the mine burdens or nearby waste land. The paper presents a pioneering efforts made to isolate and identify, the AMFfrom Fluorspar mines in Gujarat and then Glomus fasciculatum was incorporated in polybags filled with normal garden soil. Plants werealso raised by single spore inoculation method. Preliminary experiments revealed that the inoculated AMF strains promoted seedlinggrowth of Leuceana leucocephala and Millettia pinnata. The inoculation of AMF spores enhanced the growth of both the plants, and suchapplication can be used in sustainable restoration of the mining areas. Review discusses the structure of AM spores and mechanismsinvolved to equip them to survive in stressed situations and as symbionts help the plants to perform better.

Аутигенные минералы в фанерозойских вулканогенно-осадочных отложениях северной части зоны перехода от Азиатского континента к Тихому океану

Authigenic minerals in Phanerozoic volcanogenic-sedimentary deposits in the northern part of the transition zone from the Asian continent to the Pacific Ocean have been studied. Сhlorite, mica, corrensite, rectorite, defective chlorite, kaolinite, smectite, calcite, barite, gypsum, epsomite, zeolites, cristobalite, quartz, and goethite were found. Corrensite, rectorite; associations: corrensite-laumontite, corrensite-epsomite-authigenic calcite and mica-kaolinite-quartz have significant indicative properties. Such a set of minerals indicates that the thickness of sediments in the studied basins could reach three to five kilometers, and the temperature of their formation could be more than 150°C. The mica-kaolinite association may indicate epicontinental sedimentation conditions associated with coal formation on nearby land, corrensite-chlorite association may indicate conditions favorable for the evaporation of sea water, and the presence of laumontite in it may indicate the periodic calcium supply to the sedimentation basin. Periods of mineral formation, possibly related to global climatic events — 113–120, 110–113, 105–110, 93–95, 72–83, 61–72, 56–61, 33–56 Ma, were identified, which can serve as reference for reconstructing the conditions of sedimentation and a basis for more reliable stratigraphic constructions.

Environmental and immunonutrition effects on public health linked to water pollutants and fish disease

Freshwater aquatic environment are indeed in a bad state worldwide, due to human activities and there is an urgent need to save them and their biodiversity. Water plays a key role in diluting pollutants and because of that superiority as a solvent, it also means that water-soluble wastes pollute water easily. For instance, runoff from nearby lands provides freshwater life zones with an almost constant input of organic material, inorganic nutrients, and other pollutants. These cause undesirable changes in the physicochemical or biological factors of ecosystem, which in turn directly or indirectly affect the ecological balance of the environment, and ultimately affect human beings. And also advances in culture techniques and the introduction of new species have contributed to the rapid growth of the aquaculture industry. However, treatment methods including approved antibiotics and chemotherapeutants are directly or indirectly affected the consumer/environment-friendly. This review paper tried to indicate how agricultural activities and unbalanced fish nutrition affect fish health and water quality at large the environment.

Provenance discrimination and geodynamics analysis of open and island coasts, South East coast of India: Inference on heavy minerals and hydrodynamics

AbstractThe coastal sediments contain heavy minerals originating from the offshore and hinterland. We investigated the heavy minerals on different sediment layers of three trenches such as the Dhanushkodi open coast and Manoli island beach in India to identify the pervasiveness and depositional environment of the sediments. The primary objectives of this study are to identify the source rock and to establish the impact of hydrodynamics on the vertical textural trends of heavy mineral distribution. This is in conjunction with sediment deposits. The mineral array consists mainly of ilmenite, sillimanite, garnet, and pyroxene. Both surface and sub‐surface sediments indicate their origin, primarily from metamorphic and igneous rocks. To achieve the goal of the present study, during the low tide time, three shallow‐depth trenches, such as Trench‐1 (Palk Bay Side) and Trench‐2 (Gulf of Mannar side) were dug at Dhanushkodi beach and Trench‐3 excavated at Manoli island beach. The tip of the Dhanushkodi is called Arichalmunai and it is a continuously growing dynamic sandspit whereas Manoli Island has massive reefs with both live and dead corals on its Southern and Northern borders and it includes lagoonal lakes and extensive mudflats. The fine and very fine sand fractions of Trenches 1 and 2 contain a high concentration of ilmenite and sillimanite. Due to high energy sorting by the wave action, Trench 3 contains relatively high concentrations of mineral assemblages with very fine sand particles. Provenance relationships are established based on the mineralogical contents of trench sediments, and the observation of down‐core variation of heavy mineral assemblages implies that they were sourced from various igneous and metamorphic rocks of nearby land areas, such as the East and West coasts of India, as well as the Sri Lankan coast.

A dois passos do paraíso: o caso da Pousada Bravo House

Abstract This teaching case portrays the history of Pousada Bravo House, in which two brothers, owners of the inn, faced a dilemma: should they build more adapted rooms in the inn or lease a plot of land nearby and build everything from scratch so there are no problems with the facilities? To build the case about the work of diversifying activities to increase revenue, data sources were obtained from primary sources, through interviews with the company’s partners, and from secondary sources by searching the written media and article database. The script, events, company name, and participants remained real during the case, which focuses on the area of business strategy and allows analysis of managers’ decision-making. The main objective of the case is to provide a reflection on the formulation of strategies for the company’s growth and it can be used in graduation and technician courses in business administration.

Utility-Scale Solar Farms and Agricultural Land Values

<h3>Abstract</h3> Property value models are used to examine how utility-scale, ground-mount solar farms impact nearby agricultural land values. Results indicate that solar farms do not have direct positive or negative spillover effects on nearby agricultural land values. However, results also suggest that solar farm construction may indirectly affect agricultural land values by signaling the land’s suitability for future solar development. Specifically, results indicate that proximity of agricultural land to electric transmission lines may be positively valued after a solar farm is constructed nearby.

Flow behaviour concerning bank stability in the presence of spur dike – A review

Abstract Flow in streams and rivers typically erodes the banks, causing channel bank migration laterally, resulting in loss of nearby land, modification in channel morphology, excessive sediment transport, and water quality degradation. A spur dike is a hydraulic structure placed at the channel bank projecting outward to guide or divert the flow away from the bank, thus protecting it from erosion. The stability of the riverbed and banks is influenced by turbulent characteristics such as three-dimensional velocity distribution, turbulent kinetic energy, Reynolds shear stress, turbulent intensity, and bed shear stress. The researchers found that these turbulence parameters are instrumental in sediment movement along the channel's bed and from its banks. Spurs dikes are a significant river training structure provided along the river bank to protect from erosion. Several aspects related to spur dikes, such as their geometry, physical features, design considerations, flow and scour patterns, etc., are critically reviewed in this paper. Despite the numbers of literature in the field of turbulent characteristics and scour depth around spur dike, the role of vegetation and the effect of seepage around spur dike still remains an unexplored area. These knowledge gaps of spur dikes in field conditions are discussed for future studies.

Dar Al-Hadeeth AL- Muhajiriya and Al-Mudhafari in Mosul (Historical study)

The science of hadith has received a great deal of attention from the people of knowledge and their students, therefore they embraced it with great passion, drawing from it listening, reading,writing, classifying and publishing. The city of Mosul had a group of distinguished hadiths scholars who came from the faraway and nearby Isiamic lands to retail about them Houses for teaching hadith were established in them,the most important of which were the Muhajiriya House of Hadith and the Dar al-Hadeeth al-Mudhafari,in which many sheikhs and scholars studied .Houses for teaching hadith were places for preaching and giving advice, and for retailing hadith and meeting scholars, in addition to authoring religious works,especially in the field of hadith ,and this undoubtedly had a positive impact on the Arab Islamic civilization.

The Shortwave Radiative Flux Response to an Injection of Sea Salt Aerosols in the Gulf of Mexico

AbstractMarine cloud brightening (MCB) has been proposed as a potential means of geoengineering the climate, temporarily providing cooling to offset some of the effects of climate change. Marine sky brightening (MSB), involving the direct scattering of sunlight from sea salt injection into the marine boundary layer, has been proposed as an additional geoengineering method that could work in areas that are not regularly cloudy. Here, we use a regional atmospheric model to simulate MCB and MSB over the Gulf of Mexico and nearby land, a highly populated and economically important region that is not characterized by persistent marine stratocumulus cloud cover. Injection of sea salt in the Aitken mode from a region in the central Gulf of Mexico equivalent to 10.8 Tg yr−1 produces an upwards 8.4 W m−2 radiative flux change across the region at the top of the atmosphere, largely due to cloud property changes. Comparatively, a similar mass injection in the accumulation mode produces a 3.1 W m−2 radiative flux change driven primarily by direct scattering. Injection of even larger particles produces a much smaller radiative flux change. Shortwave flux changes due to clouds are largely driven by an increase in cloud droplet number concentration and an increase in cloud liquid water path (each contributing about 45% to the flux change), with a much lower contribution from cloud fraction changes (10%).

VOC and Trace Gas Measurements and Ozone Chemistry Over the Chesapeake Bay During OWLETS-2, 2018

The Ozone Water-Land Environmental Transition Study, 2018 (OWLETS-2) measured total non-methane hydrocarbons (TNMHC) and EPA PAMS Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) on an island site in the northern Chesapeake Bay 2.1 and 3.4 times greater in concentration, respectively, than simultaneous measurements at a land site just 13 km away across the land-water interface. Many PAMS VOCs had larger concentrations at the island site despite lower NEI emissions over the water, but most of the difference comprised species generally consistent with gasoline vapor or exhaust. Sharp chemical differences were observed between the island and mainland and the immediate air ~300 m above the water surface observed by airplane. Ozone formation potential over land was driven by propene and isoprene but toluene and hexane were dominant over the water with little isoprene observed. VOC concentrations over the water were noted to increase diurnally with an inverse pattern to land resulting in increasing NOx sensitivity over the water. Total reactive nitrogen was lower over the water than the nearby land site, but reservoir compounds (NOz) were greater. Ozone production rates were generally slow (~5 ppb hr−1) both at the surface and aloft over the water, even during periods of high ozone (>70 ppbv) at the water surface. However, specific events showed rapid ozone production >40 ppb hr−1 at the water’s surface during situations with high VOCs and sufficient NOx. VOC and photochemistry patterns at the island site were driven by marine sources south of the island, implicating marine traffic, and indicate ozone abatement strategies over land may not be similarly applicable to ozone over the water.

Nearshore bathymetry and seafloor property studies from Space lidars: CALIPSO and ICESat-2.

In shallow nearshore waters, seafloor heights and properties can be accurately measured by the current generation of space-based elastic backscatter lidars: CALIOP, flying aboard the CALIPSO satellite and ATLAS aboard ICESat-2. CALIOP's 532 nm volume depolarization ratios, together with the ratios of the attenuated backscatter coefficients measured at 532 nm and 1064 nm, can efficiently distinguish optically shallow waters from nearby land surfaces and deep oceans. ATLAS's high vertical resolution photon measurements can accurately determine seafloor depths in shallow water bodies, characterize seafloor reflectance, and provide assessments of ocean biomass concentrations in the intervening water column. By adding bathymetry, seafloor optical properties (e.g., reflectance, depolarization ratio and attenuated backscatter), and nighttime observations, space lidar measurements obtained in nearshore waters can provide a wealth of unique information to complement existing satellite-based ocean color remote sensing capabilities. The results reported here demonstrate the feasibility of using satellite lidars for nearshore seafloor ecosystem analyses, which in turn provide critical insights for studies of coastal navigation and seabed topography changes due to disasters, as well as the temporal and spatial morphological evolution of coastal systems.

Snowband Characteristics Associated With Lake‐Effect Misovortices During the OWLeS Project

AbstractVortices of diameters 100 m to 10 km have been observed during lake‐effect snowstorms. Lines of misovortices (diameters = 40–4,000 m) have recently been documented forming over Lake Ontario during long lake‐axis‐parallel (LLAP)‐type lake‐effect storms. Using National Weather Service Weather Surveillance Radar—1988 Doppler (WSR‐88D) and Doppler on Wheels radar data from the Ontario Winter Lake‐effect Systems (OWLeS) project, lines of misovortices (also referred to as “misovortex lines” in this study) were investigated for intensive observation period (IOP)7 (7 January 2014) and IOP9 (9 January 2014). Results revealed that the misovortex lines formed on the southern or northern side of the west‐to‐east‐oriented LLAP band, whichever was closest to a low‐level boundary nearest the corresponding south or north shoreline (northern part in IOP7, southern part in IOP9). Examination of these two IOPs in the context of a total of 23 OWLeS IOPs, 11 of which had predominantly LLAP band morphology, showed that, in 4 of the 11 LLAP IOPs, horizontal shear zones/reflectivity bands formed in preferred regions over Lake Ontario and nearby land areas where low‐level boundaries (e.g., land breeze fronts) have been noted to develop near shoreline irregularities. Horizontal shear zones were predominant in approximately half of the OWLeS LLAP IOPs and were associated with storms having a well‐organized, solid banded reflectivity structure. Misovortices occurred when horizontal shear zones were prevalent, supporting the idea that horizontal shearing instability was important to their formation.