Barrie Creeks, Lovers Creek, and Hewitt's Creek Subwatershed Plan

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The Barrie Creeks, Lovers Creek and Hewitt’s Creek Subwatershed Plan sensitive features such as wetlands and creeks providing habitat for cold water fish species. Once identified, the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan directs municipalities to develop policies in their Official Plans to protect, improve, or restore these features. Figure 7-1: Groundwater interactions in the Barrie Creeks, Lovers Creek and Hewitt's Creek subwatersheds. Chapter 7: Integration and implementation 317
The Barrie Creeks, Lovers Creek and Hewitt’s Creek Subwatershed Plan 7.3 Agricultural interactions - land use, streams, and aquatic wildlife When rain falls and flows over exposed soils on agricultural land, it can cause more erosion than in natural areas, due to a relative lack of vegetation cover, and to picking up contaminants not present in natural areas. Soil particles eroded by stormwater in agricultural areas often have phosphorus adsorbed to them, particularly if the storm event happens relatively soon after a surface application of fertilizer (Figure 7-2). As such, agricultural stormwater can contribute to both the sediment loads and phosphorus loads in receiving water bodies. In fact, historically, the conversion of much of the Lake Simcoe watershed to agricultural land in the mid 1800s caused a spike in phosphorus loadings to the lake (Wilson and Ryan, 1988). Agriculture remains a significant contributor of phosphorus to Lake Simcoe (Louis Berger Group, Inc., 2010), and, as the largest land use in the Hewitt’s Creek subwatershed, is the largest contributor of phosphorus to Hewitt’s Creek. Other contaminants, such as nitrates and metals can also be washed off of agricultural lands and into nearby watercourses The addition of contaminant-laden sediment to watercourses can have significant deleterious impacts to aquatic ecosystems. Suspended sediment in watercourses increases the amount of sunlight that is absorbed by the water, and thus can increase water temperature. At high levels, it can also clog or abrade fish gills, impeding their ability to breathe, or cloud the water, reducing the hunting efficiency of visual predators. As the sediment settles out of the water column, it can blanket the substrate, covering important spawning habitat for species such as brook trout, mottled sculpin, white sucker, and others. The addition of the phosphorus adsorbed to sediment contributes to the eutrophication cycle, which is of great concern in the Lake Simcoe watershed. Phosphorus acts as a fertilizer in aquatic ecosystems, causing increased growth of aquatic plants, and most significantly in streams, algae. As the algae decompose, bacteria involved in the decomposition process take dissolved oxygen from the water column. At high levels of algae, this respiration can cause the amount of dissolved oxygen in watercourses to decline to critical levels, making them less suitable as habitat for fish and other aquatic organisms (Figure 7-2). An issue which is specific to the management of agricultural watersheds are agricultural drains. These drains include both open ditches and tile drains which typically are installed in areas with poor natural drainage, to improve agricultural productivity. Ditches, or open drains, are typically straightened to quickly remove water from the area and have limited riparian vegetation. To ensure they continue to work properly, they require maintenance, which can lead to the alteration or removal of remaining vegetation, and disruption and change to the substrate. In addition, their intended function of rapidly draining wet soil has the unintended consequences of changing the rate and timing of peak flows, and increasing the volume of phosphorus and sediment travelling from agricultural fields to Lake Simcoe. As an example, the conversion of much of the headwaters of Hewitt’s Creek from natural watercourses to agricultural drains, and the resulting loss in water storage in the summer, would help to explain why aquatic communities are degraded in these watercourses (Figure 5-3, Figure 5-6, Figure 5-12). In cases where these drains bisect wetlands, they can cause the water table to drop, decreasing the extent and hydroperiod of ephemeral wetland pools, which can lead to a loss of breeding habitat for frogs and salamanders, and migratory habitat for waterfowl (Figure 7-2). Another issue particular to agricultural lands is the degradation of water quality and riparian areas where livestock have access to watercourses. The input of urine and manure directly into the water and onto low lying nearby fields, where it can be washed into the watercourse, affects water quality. The livestock can also trample streambanks, which contributes to instability and erosion, and sedimentation in the stream; while livestock in the stream can destroy spawning habitat (Figure 7-2). Chapter 7: Integration and implementation 318
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Barrie Creeks, Lovers Creek, and He
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Acknowledgements The Barrie Creeks,
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• East of the Barrie Creeks subwa
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Fish Habitat -Fish communities in t
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Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS
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3.5.4 Water Temperature - thermal d
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5.3.11 Climate Change 237 5.4 ASSES
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6.5.10 Improving data management 31
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LIST OF FIGURES CHAPTER 1 Figure 1-
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Figure 2-34: Annual precipitation (
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CHAPTER 4 Figure 4-1: Hydrologic cy
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Figure 5-11: Pathways by which impe
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Figure 7-11: Riparian area with app
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Table 3-4: Surface water quality co
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CHAPTER 5 Table 5-1: Fish species c
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The Barrie Creeks, Lovers Creek and
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Creek ANNE ST N BAYFIELD ST N LINE
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Barrie Creeks, Lovers Creek, and Hewitt's Creek Subwatershed Plan

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