Study Sites/Field Stations are areas where scientists, staff and students can temporarily reside to conduct particular research and experiments associated with key locations.

The Co-op Unit has three field stations located at Killarney, Whitepine Lake and Whirligig Lake that are utilized on a regular basis.

Killarney Research Centre

Considered one of Ontario Parks’ crown jewels, Killarney Provincial Park is 363 sq. km. (140 sq. mile) majestic mountainous wildernesses, sapphire lakes and jack pine ridges that protect some of Ontario’s outstanding landscapes.  Its spectacular elevations, white quartzite hills and clear deep lakes offer an unparalleled environment for any camping, canoeing or hiking experience.

Once higher than the Rocky Mountains, the white quartzite hills (La Cloche mountains) formed from Igneous rock, gleam like snowy peaks from afar.  It was these features which inspired many members of Canada’s renowned ‘Group of Seven’ artists to paint some of their most memorable works. One of those artists, A.Y. Jackson, was instrumental in having the area designated a provincial park.

Whitepine Lake Experimental Site

Whitepine Lake is a 69 ha headwater lake, located 90 km north of Sudbury.  It has a simple fish community consisting of a dense population of naturally reproducing lake trout and a few prey species including white sucker, yellow perch and creek chub.  Whitepine Lake has a 328 ha forested watershed and our research cabin is the only building within the drainage area.  Whitepine Lake has a history of acidification damage, but conditions have improved in recent decades.  Whitepine was established as a research sanctuary lake in 1980, and has been continually monitored by MNR/MOE since then.

Whirligig Lake - Aurora Trout

The aurora trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), named after the shimmering iridescent colours of the northern lights is a rare race, some have suggested is a subspecies, of brook trout.  It was native to only two lakes in the world, Whirligig Lake (11 ha) and Whitepine Lake (77 ha), located 110 km north of Sudbury in Lady-Evelyn Smoothwater Provincial Park.  The native populations were extirpated because of lake acidification between 1958-1967, and the strain survived only as a hatchery stock, maintained in the Hills Lake hatchery from wild eggs collected in 1958. In 1987 it was placed on Canada’s endangered species list.  In recent decades several attempts were made to establish reproducing population of aurora trout in other lakes in Ontario, but to date no such populations have been permanently established.

In 1989, an attempt was made to return the fish to one of its native lakes (Whirligig), by first neutralizing the lake with powdered limestone.  This strategy proved successful and the first native recruits were captured in 1992.  Since then the population has flourished, but the lake continues to re-acidify, approaching the lethal threshold of pH 5.0, it has also been re-limed on two occasions (1994, 1996).  The original stock is still in the hatchery, and we now have a second reproducing population established in Whitepine Lake, where pH rose to a current level of 5.2 without liming.

The pH in Whirligig has been steadily declining but we are carefully monitoring the situation in hope that we will not need to re-lime again.  The paleolimnological inference for this lake suggests that the historic pH was very close to the current level.