Successional Recovery

Drilling activities and the roads that link them disturb a wide range of different ecosystem types of the boreal forest, and there are strong ecological and regulatory needs and benefits to rapidly reclaiming and restoring these ecosystems following exploration and extraction. The objective of this project is to examine various aspects of reclamation specific to the mixed wood and peatland ecosystems affected by drilling and exploration operations and to test different strategies for reclamation/restoration of these well pads. Our hypothesis is that the formation of microtopographic variation by mechanical treatments at the time of abandonment of the well pad will more rapidly re-establish a wide range of different moss, herbaceous and woody vegetation than leaving the pad in its flattened state at time of abandonment. We will also test if there is variation in the positioning of Sphagnum fuscum along microtopographical gradients established by mechanical treatments.

The aspen study (2015) compared protecting original forest floor under a layer of subsoil during leveling of exploratory drilling pads (often only used for a short time) against the current practice of stripping forest topsoil and placing it back on the site during reclamation phase (rollback). Aspen suckers were taller, denser and survived better when forest floor was protected compared to the rollback treatment; this should be the preferred strategy for drilling pad construction and reclamation in aspen-dominated boreal forests. The wooded rich fen (WRF) peatland study (2018) found replicating hummock topography in areas flattened by oil sands exploration facilitated colonization of many peatland plants not adapted to waterlogged soils. Species richness and diversity of liverworts, sphagnum, and true mosses were higher in mounded plots, and shrubs had higher richness and cover, and trees had higher richness, cover and diversity, in mounded plots, suggesting this method may be effective for stimulating vegetation development on OSE-degraded WRFs.