Sensitive areas

    There is solid evidence that lakes in certain "sensitive" areas of North America and Europe have become more acid in recent decades. Sensitive areas are downwind of major industrial areas and where the underlying rock is granite rather than limestone. In North America, the Adirondacks of New York, the mountains of northern New England as well as large areas of southern Quebec have been particularly hard-hit. Both the plant and animal life in a lake become altered as the pH drops. The productivity of the lakes, and their content of desirable fish, decline.