Brock assistant professor to take core samples of Wainfleet bog
This map shows the Wainfleet Bog and the portions controlled by the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority and Ministry of Natural Resources and those in private hands.
Sometime in the past 5,000 to 12,000 years, the Wainfleet Bog formed.
Core samples taken from it can provide researchers with an environmental history of it, says Brock University’s Michael Pisaric.
The assistant professor in the department of geography will be one of the researchers working in the bog, at the end of Erie Peat Rd. in Wainfleet, in the new year. Pisaric will be working alongside researchers from McMaster University and with one of his students.
In an e-mail interview with The Tribune, he said core samples can provide an environmental history of the bog over very long timescales — thousands of years — much longer than any written history can provide.
“By examining a number of different subfossils preserved in the peat — pollen from trees, shrubs, grasses and most other plants living in the bog — we can measure changes in the amount of carbon stored by the bog throughout the history of the bogs existence. We can also identify organisms that live in the bog such as microscopic organisms such as testate amoebae,” says Pisaric.
Testate amoebae are unicellular shelled organisms which are commonly found living on the surface of most peat bogs. Pisaric says they are thought to be sensitive to changes in the hydrology of peat bogs.
“As the water table moves up and down throughout the year and over many years, this will affect the types of testate amoebae that will be found there. In some instances you can also look at the charcoal preserved in peat cores, but this has to be done somewhat cautiously, as with all of these analyses from peat cores, because when a peat bog burns, it burns part of the record. So past fires may have removed parts of the record.”
The Wainfleet Bog has sustained fires through its existence, including a fire this past summer.
Pisaric says researchers may take some core samples from the area that burned, but cores for long-term studies of several thousands of years will likely occur outside the burned area and sections that were mined in the past.
Core samples have been taken from the bog in the past. Pisaric says the maximum depth of the peat is about five metres, with an average of three metres throughout the bog.
“We are still working out the details about what we hope to study, but certainly how the hydrology of the bog has changed through time is one question that I am interested in. The testate amoebae may be a tool that we can use to explore that.”
The bog had been drained off in the past to allow for peat mining operations.
Another factor in the hydrology of the bog, Pisaric says, are invasive species such as European birch trees.
“It forms dense thickets of vegetation that makes it very difficult to get around in the bog, especially in areas where it has become drier. In these areas, the birch does very well. In recent years, the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority has done some restoration work in the bog and in those areas where it has become wetter again, the European birch does not do well and dies off.”