Oilsands ecosystem on the road to recovery

Pete Yee

Traumatized land from oilsand and mining development is en route to transformation into a complete boreal ecosystem—a forest re-built from the ground up.

Professor Simon Landhausser of the University of Alberta's Department of Renewable Resources focuses his research on forest reclamation of land disrupted by industry. As the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, EPCOR, and Oilsands Industrial Research Chair, Landhausser is working in surface mined areas around Edmonton and Fort McMurray.

"Oilsands [and mining] companies have been doing a lot of reclamation research. And significant work has been done on soil stabilization and herbaceous plant cover on the soils," Landhausser related.

Provincial law forbids the planting of non-native tree species on public lands, and requires that seedlings must be grown from a seed source close to where they are replanted. So Landhausser is studying how to initiate land reclamation using native aspen, started from seeds collected around Fort McMurray and in Edmonton areas like the River Valley.

"Aspen is a species that naturally comes in after a disturbance. Once they're established, they grow quickly, to and can create a protective canopy that creates a habitat for other forest species to establish," Landhausser described.

He explained that removing, storing, and replacing the soil during the mining operations tears apart the complex levels of mineral soil and organic layers, as well as disturbs the vital interactions between the root systems and symbiotic fungi, bacteria, and algae other micro-organisms that co-exist underground. Developing a new organic layer is important for these disturbed lands.

"Because an aspen loses its leaves each year, [the fallen leaves] start decomposing and kick starts the natural nutrient cycling processes in the soil; the nutrients and carbon provided by the leaf litter create a kind of potting soil to bring the mineral soil alive again," Landhausser said.

When fungi and microbial activity develop in the soil, they become important indicators and factors in the health of the organic matter and forest ecosystem. This new microbial activity will allow aspen to develop healthy and extensive root systems, and that in turn will help to progress the forest developments into the appropriate forest species assemblages and distribution.

Moreover, Landhausser hopes the rapid tree canopy growth will be the habitat required by forest flora and for fauna, and in time functioning similarly to a natural ecosystem. He described how interaction between plant and insect communities, for example, could be indicative of the ecosystem's functionality.

Creating that habitat is vital, so the seedlings must be tenacious and fast-growing. Landhausser is examining the seedling physiology—response to stress, reserves, growing potential—to grow a stock to survive.

"The seedlings do need to be hardy and to thrive," Landhausser stressed. "For example, producing seedlings with high root-to-leaf shoot ratio will hopefully help them to establish successfully and grow quickly."

The harsh growing realities of sun exposure, transplant shock, and potential wind and hail on the planting sites are major challenges to seedling survival and reforestation.

Landhausser's work addresses the need for total forest ecosystem restoration. The scope is similar, compared Landhausser, to processes found on a land regenerating after severe natural disturbances such as a volcanic eruption, or a glacier receding. Only he's hoping to do it with speed and deliberation.

Beyond silviculture and the simple cultivation of trees, Landhausser highlighted that his research is not to establish more seedling plantations, but to establish a forest.

"We can learn a lot about how ecosystems start from scratch," he expressed, "and how vegetation gets re-established. Left alone, it would regenerate, but it would likely take a thousand years."