the Science of the

Total Environment
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The Scienceof the Total Environment 148 (1994) 99-102

The last 150 years: a history of environmental

degradation in Sudbury
Gerard M. Courtin
Department of Biology, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario. P3E 2C6, Canada

Sudbury, Ontario owes its existence both to

exploitation of natural resources and its strategic
location with respect to the transcontinental railroad. White settlement was only sporadic until the
1800s and the major impact was that of the fur
trade that capitalized on the abundance of rivers
and lakes both with respect to fur-bearing animals
and to transportation.
The region lies at the northern edge of the White
Pine-Hemlock-Northern Hardwoods segregate of
the Eastern Deciduous Forest. The original name
for Sudbury was Ste Anne des Pins, a testimonial
to the very large red and white pine that were
major elements of the forest along the north and
eastern shores of Lake Huron. Logging of this
resource began in the 1850s and was a most important source of lumber for markets to the south of
the Great Lakes for the next forty years. In 1883
the building of the Canadian Pacific Railroad and
the rediscovery of the nickel-copper ore body, first
discovered in 1857, along the railroad right-of-way
changed the appearance of the Sudbury region
fundamentally and irreversibly.
A progression of environmental impacts all
added to the degradation of the biota. First, fires
were frequent as there was an abundant source of
fuel in the form of debris following logging. Second, open bed roasting in which the ore that was
rich in sulphur was heaped upon a fire of logs and

set alight to smoulder for 3 - 6 months caused further depletion of the forest both because of logging
for fuel wood and because of fume kill. Between
1902 and 1921, 200 000 cords of wood were cut by
one mining company alone, and caused both death
of the adjacent forest and acidification and metal
toxicity of the soil. Third, the removal of a vegetative cover promoted erosion of the thin till mantle
that covered the ice-scoured plain of Precambrian
Shield rocks. Last, following the era of open-bed
roasting in 1929, the smelters that took their place
had relatively low stacks that caused a more
widespread influence upon soil acidity and metal
toxicity. The superstack became operational in
1971.
This litany of logging, smelting, fires and erosion has left a unique legacy in the vicinity of
Sudbury. Lands have been totally denuded of vegetation and their soils made acid and metal toxic
due to atmospheric emission of large quantities of
both metals and sulphur dioxide. Tailings, finelyground rock waste that is left following separation
of the ore, fill former lake basins and constitute a
source of wind-blown dust that has the potential
for providing a source of acidity which may then
leach into natural water courses. Where a forest remains, the natural biodiversity has been drastically
reduced.
In the 1960s, attempts were initiated to curb

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damage to the environment, to assess the extent of

damage and to investigate methods of rehabilitation. INCO Limited developed the techniques of
tailings stabilization that is still in use today. Personnel from the Ministry of Natural Resources
(then, The Ontario Department of Lands and
Forests) together with biologists from Laurentian
University began to investigate the barriers to barrenland revegetation and to develop the techniques necessary to establish a permanent vegetative
cover. These initiatives are described elsewhere
(Winterhalder, 1985, 1988a,b, 1989, 1991, 1993).
Between the totally denuded barrenlands and
the natural forest lies a zone of vegetation that
must be considered as strictly anthropogenic. This
vegetative assemblage is low in diversity and is
dominated by a single species, white birch, Betula
papyrifera. The forest gives the appearance of a
savannah woodland with small groups of highly
coppiced and stunted birch separated by openings
of bare ground or sparse herbaceous vegetation.
The dimensions of this system of 'micro-deserts'
and 'micro-oases' varies typically between 5 and 15
m.

The degraded environment comprises both

edaphic, vegetative and microclimatic components
that are probably unique. The soil pH is commonly 4.2 but may be below 4.0. Such depressed pHs
can cause metallic ions, including Ni, Cu, Mn, and
A1 to become soluble and therefore toxic. Furthermore, the soil typically contains 30% or more of
silt and very fine sand but whether this is the result
of the accelerated erosion process or whether it is
glacially derived is not known. Such soils, however, have a capillary structure that makes them
prone to frost heaving owing to diel (i.e. over the
course of 24 h) freeze-thaw cycles during the
autumn and prior to the establishment of a permanent snowpack.
The openings in the forest canopy have a very
harsh microclimate. In summer, solar radiation
strikes the ground directly resulting in soil surface
temperatures that can exceed 70C. The surrounding trees, although offering sparse cover, reduce
advective cooling by wind so that leaf temperatures may be 10C or more above that of the surrounding air. Such conditions mitigate against
seedling establishment and plant productivity. In

G.M. Courtin / Sci. Total Environ. 148 (1994) 99-102

autumn, on clear nights, reradiation to the night

sky frequently causes upper layers of the soil to
freeze causing both vertical displacement because
of segregated ice formation and needle ice. Such
surface disturbance seriously reduces the probability of establishment of seedlings that survived the
high temperatures and drought during the summer.
The monoculture of birch mentioned above
owes its existence to the environmental stresses
just discussed and to the ability of birch to germinate in the mineral soil and to generate new
shoots from adventitious buds situated at the base
of the stem. The few seedlings that do manage to
survive do so in the least frost susceptible ground
but where there is still sufficient movement to
prune the root system annually and thus stunt
growth. Five- to seven-year-old 'saplings' are frequently no more than 15 cm high. This ability of
birch to persist is only shared by two other species,
red maple, Acer rubrum and red oak, Quercus
rubra, but red maple suffers from regressive
dieback and red oak is restricted edaphically in the
sites where it will grow so that birch emerges as the
dominant and most widespread species. The drawback of a monoculture is that disease and insect
pests find an abundant source of food that encourages populations to reach epidemic proportions very rapidly. This is true of Sudbury where
birch is attacked by a number of insect pests including leaf miner, sawfly, forest tent caterpillar
and bronze birch borer. In the past 2 years, gypsy
moth has been added to the list of birch
defoliators. Bronze birch borer is the most serious
of these pests because once a stem is attacked the
mode of feeding causes girdling of the stem as the
cambium and phloem are destroyed. At present it
is estimated that between 60 and 90% of stems are
dead or dying depending upon location. Basal,
adventitious buds are being triggered already to
produce new shoots to replace those being killed.
It is believed that this phenomenon is cyclical and
estimated that the cycle lasts 30-35 years.
The restoration that has been witnessed in the
barrenlands and the tailings through human intervention will have to be practised in the dwarf
savannah woodland if the cycle of death and coppicing is to be broken. It is becoming clear that as
long as the harsh microclimate of the micro deserts

G.M. Courtin/Sci. Total Environ 148 (1994) 99-102

101

isted in the forests of 150 years ago now grow at

too great a distance from Sudbury for their seeds
to be carried naturally to the places where they are
most needed.
Fig. 1 attempts to summarize the various factors
that have led to environmental degradation in the
Sudbury area. It should be stressed that the vertical axis is qualitative rather than quantitative and
attempts to convey the intensity of the various fac-

persists there will never be survival of sufficient

seedlings to cause complete canopy closure. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the existing trees in the
micro-oases will ever become tall enough for the
crowns to meet and thus to moderate the surface
microclimate of the spaces between them. Lastly,
it is essential to increase the biological diversity of
the sites and this will only be accomplished with
human help because many of the species that ex-

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1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

YEAR
........... S M E L T I N G

........

SOIL pH/TOXICITY

FIRE

...........

INSECTS

EROSION

......

LOGGING

......

Fig. 1. Q u a l i t a t i v e a n d subjective estimates, expressed as a p e r c e n t a g e , o f the i m p a c t t h a t logging, fire, insects, smelting, e r o s i o n a n d

soil acidity/toxicity h a v e h a d o n the S u d b u r y a r e a since 1850. W h e r e v e r either historical o r scientific d a t a were available, these h a v e
b e e n u s e d to help g e n e r a t e the curves presented

102
tors in terms of percent. Logging increased rapidly
in the mid-1800s and declined gradually as the
forest resource was both depleted and destroyed.
Fire is a cyclical phenomenon that is driven both
by chance and the availability of fuel. It is assumed
that there were frequent and severe fires that consumed the slash that followed logging and also
following fume-kill of the forest that remained in
the mid-1900s. Smelting began just before the turn
of the century. Its impact is thought to have been
local during the years of open bed roasting but
fume-kill may well have been at its worst during
the years that emissions were by means of short
stacks. Impact in recent years has decreased radically as smelting methods have become increasingly
efficient and legislation has become more rigorous.
Soil toxicity increased rapidly following the initiation of smelting and, once again, may well have
been most severe in the era of the short smelter
stacks. Decline in acidity and toxicity, however,
will only be very slow under natural conditions.
Erosion was driven by death of the forest and
therefore the death of the root systems and destruction of the organic layer that together play a
major role in binding the soil together. Erosion
decreased gradually as soil was lost from erodable
surfaces. The impact of insects has been cyclical
and one must assume that peaks in the cycle are
driven by the abundance of food. It is hypothesized that the destructive role of insects has increased progressively as diversity has been lost and
the forest has approached the status of a monoculture.
I hypothesize that no significant change in the
open birch coppice woodland will take place in the
short term but rather that change will be in the
order of decades. It is evident that both mosses
and lichens are becoming more abundant with
time and that even this thin cover is improving the

G.M. Courtin/Sci. Total Environ. 148 (1994) 99-102

surface stability of the soil both in terms of water

loss and frost damage. It may be expected,
therefore, that the probability of birch seedlings
becoming established will increase and that the
forest openings will slowly be populated with
birch. Such a change will not increase diversity
and so the problem of insect attack will continue
undiminished unless considerable effort and
money is expended to plant a range of tree species,
especially conifers, to re-establish the diverse and
healthy forest that was present before human
impact.
Winterhalder, K., 1985.The use of manual surfaceseeding, liming and fertilization in the reclamation of acid, metalcontaminated land in the Sudbury, Ontario mining and
smelting regionof Canada. Proceedingsof the 1985National Meeting of the AmericanAssociationfor Surface Mining
and Reclamation, Denver, Colorado, pp. 196-204.
Winterhalder, K., 1988a. Spatial heterogeneityin an industrially attenuated landscape before and after revegetation. In:
M.R. Moss (Ed.), Landscape Ecology & Management,
Polyscience, Montreal, pp. 203-210.
Winterhalder, K., 1988b. Trigger factors initiating natural
revegetation processes on barren, acid, metal-toxic soils
near Sudbury, Ontario smelters. Proceedings of the 1988
Mine Drainage and Surface Mine Reclamation Conference,
Pittsburgh, PA, April 17-22, 1988, pp. 118-124.
Winterhalder, K., 1989.The trigger-factorapproach to the initiation of natural regeneration of plant communities on
industrially-damaged lands at Sudbury, Ontario. Proceedings of the First Annual Conference, Societyfor Ecological
Restoration, Oakland, California, pp. 215-226.
Winterhalder, K., 1991. Minimal soil amelioration as a trigger
factor in the revegetation of a derelict landscape near Sudbury, Canada. In: M.C.R. Davies (Ed.), Reclamation: An
End to Dereliction?, Elsevier Applied Science, Barking, pp.
393-394.
Winterhalder, K., 1993. The roles of colonization and succession in the reclamation of mine sites. Proceedings of 10th
National Meetingof the American Societyfor Surface Mining & Reclamation, Spokane, Washington, May 16-19,
1993, pp. 30-53.