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Facing the Challenge of Boreal Restoration

I have written before about the hidden costs of resource development in Alberta, where decades of forestry and petroleum exploration has created an enormous network of roads, seismic lines, pipelines, and well sites in parts of the province that most folks would consider “remote”. If this subject is unfamiliar to you, then a few moments in front of the ABMI Mapping Portal will likely be pretty enlightening. 

The environmental effects of industrial development in the boreal forest are far-reaching. While most closely associated with the decline of woodland caribou, recent work by Jason Fisher and Cole Burton shows that petroleum development has shifted the composition entire mammalian communities in the lower Athabasca. Meanwhile, research by Julie Lovitt and colleagues shows how seismic lines - those seemingly benign petroleum-exploration corridors - impact boreal wetlands through soil compaction, altered water tables, and boosted methane emissions.

So what to do about all of this?

Michael Cody from Cenovus Energy (right, in the vest) describes the outcomes of treatment trials conduction on a restored oil-sands exploration (OSE) well site located in a treed wetland. 

A dedicated group of 50+ land managers, regulators, and researchers - including members from the Boreal Ecosystem Recovery and Assessment (BERA) project - spent two days discussing potential solutions at the COSIA Fall Field Tour, held near Bonnyville Alberta from October 1-3. Organized by Fuse Consulting,  attendees viewed a number of experimental sites which demonstrated the challenges and breakthroughs associated with restoration of industrial disturbances in the boreal forest. Showcasing the work of Cenovus Energy and Canadian Natural Resources, the tour highlighted the types of silvicultural treatments that have proven successful in encouraging a return to forest cover on difficult sites. For example, the group marveled at the effectiveness of a site-preparation technique called mounding, which improved both the survivability and growth rate of seedlings planted in treed wetlands, which can remain unforested for many decades after industrial disturbance without active restoration. 

Of course, many additional challenges remain.  The costs and trials associated with restoring thousands of hectares of disturbed sites in remote locations was discussed repeatedly by the group, as was the problem of connecting local treatments (e.g. mounding and planting at a given site) to desired regional outcomes (e.g. conservation of caribou).  

The COSIA Fall Field tour connected managers, regulators, and scientists across the province, and provided focus and future opportunities for current and future members of the BERA project.  Thank you Fuse and COSIA! 

BERA team members (left to right) Caroline Franklin (University of Alberta), Amit Saxena (Devon Energy), Michael Cody (Cenovus Energy), Greg McDermid (University of Calgary), Elston Dzus (Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries), Robert Albricht (ConocoPhillips), and Julia Linke (University of Calgary).

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New Study Reveals Hidden Impacts of Petroleum Exploration on Alberta Wetlands

Seismic lines – petroleum exploration corridors – crisscross the Alberta landscape, and are a well-known to those who spend time in the province’s backcountry. For those who do not, perhaps a short introduction is in order. Seismic lines are linear clearings about 2-8 m wide, which are cut into the forest to allow seismic equipment to be deployed in the hunt for oil and gas.  They look like narrow road allowances, but without the road.

To say that there are a lot of seismic lines in Alberta would be an understatement.  Seismic exploration has been going on in the province since 1929, and there are more than 1.8 million km of seismic lines on our landscape. If open-pit mines are the large wounds of oil and gas development in Alberta, then seismic lines are the 1.8 million cuts.

Many studies have looked at the effects of seismic lines on Alberta wildlife (they have been implicated in the decline of woodland caribou, for example) but relatively little is known about their impact on wetlands. The problem is that the effects are difficult to measure.  Individual seismic lines are relatively small, and don’t show up in the type of remote sensing datasets used by most researchers.

In a new paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences, Julie Lovitt and her co-authors used imagery from drones to quantify – for the first time – the impact of seismic lines on a forested bog near Peace River, Alberta.  Her work showed that seismic lines leave two main physical imprints on wetlands: a flattening of terrain and a decrease in the depth to water.

Outside of vegetation removal, the physical imprint of the seismic lines on wetlands are quite subtle. However, the implications of this disturbance is large. For example, Julie and her co-authors showed that the small (15.4 cm, on average) decrease in depth to water found on the seismic lines in her study area could be expected to boost methane emissions by 20-70 kg over the course of a single growing season. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with 84x the global-warming potential of carbon dioxide, and the 16 km of seismic lines that Julie measured is a pittance compared to the many thousand km of other lines that cross wetlands throughout Alberta.

How might these effects scale up to the entire province?  Stand by.

Citation:

Lovitt, J.,  M.  Rahman, S.  Saraswati,  G.J. McDermid,  M.  Strack, and  B.  Xu, 2018: UAV  remote sensing  can  reveal the  effect  of low-impact  seismic  lines on  methane  release in  a  forested Boreal  bog.  Journal of  Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences,  123,  1117-1129. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JG004232

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Drones Track Forest Regeneration in Canadian Cut Blocks

Like many young adults, I once took on a summer position as a tree planter to earn money for school. I planted thousands of tiny seedlings in former harvest areas throughout northern Alberta and British Columbia. I sometimes wondered: what becomes of all those little trees?

I now know at least part of the answer. In Canada, professional foresters visit cut blocks about three years after the tree planters have left, in order to assess their work.  Are the seedlings alive and healthy?  Is the density and spacing correct?  Do the species that were planted make sense for the environment?  These establishment surveys are required for every forest-harvest area re-planted in Canada.  If the cut block fails the assessment, it gets re-planted.

Establishment surveys take a lot of time. In our research lab, we wondered: can drones help out with this job?  Wouldn’t it be great if a forestry technician could show up to a harvest area, deploy a drone, and have it perform the establishment survey automatically?  Cut blocks can be difficult to walk around, with lots of stumps, brush piles, and leftover downed trees.  Drones could potentially help forest managers complete these surveys faster and more effectively.

In a study published July 18, Corey Feduck and his co-authors showed that yes: drones can help out with at least some of these tasks. Corey compared manual counts of conifer seedlings on the ground to those generated automatically using drone photography.  He showed that the two methods largely agreed, with drones finding more than ¾ of the seedlings counted on foot across two experimental sites in western Alberta.

The interesting thing about Corey’s work is that he didn’t use anything special.  His drone was a standard off-the-shelf multi-rotor, and his camera was a typical point-and-shoot consumer model.  No need for fancy sensors in this job.  His one modification was an inexpensive laser range finder, which he strapped to the drone to control altitude during automated flights.  

Corey found that he had to be working under the correct conditions, though. He performed flights in the spring, when the only green things in the cut blocks were the tiny “evergreen” seedlings. Come back in the summer, and it probably wouldn’t be so easy!

If you want more information on this study, you can read Corey’s paper here.  Corey can be reached at coreyfeduck@gmail.com.

This research is part of the Boreal Ecosystem Recovery and Assessment project.

Citation:

Feduck, C.; McDermid, G.J.; Castilla, G.   Detection of Coniferous Seedlings in UAV Imagery. Forests 2018, 9, 432. https://doi.org/10.3390/f9070432