RESEARCH

PEATLAND RESTORATION

Project:      3Re-Peat (Restoring, Regenerating and Reclaiming Peatlands)

Funding:    Henvey Inlet Wind Energy Centre
                    NSERC CRD w/ Canadian Natural Resource Ltd and Syncrude
                    NSERC CRD w/ OCE

Fieldwork: Pelican Mountain FireSmart Fuel Management Research Project (Wabasca, AB)
                   Northern Ontario Barrens and Bog Ecosystems Landscape (NOBEL) (Georgian Bay, ON)
                   Utikuma Research Study Area (URSA) (Utikuma, AB)

Keywords:  peatland restoration, wildfire regeneration, landscape rewilding, carbon storage,      
                    adaptive management, boreal water futures

We are developing innovative approaches to reclaim and restore degraded moss dominated peatlands to functional ecosystems.  We have established a method for the re-establishment of Sphagnum mosses on degraded peatlands and open rock barrens. Our innovative method consists of re-establishing the hydrological regime of the impacted wetland, harvesting plants in a peatland and spreading them as fragments or peat blocks in the impacted sites, and covering them over with mulch to protect them. With this human intervention, a widespread moss cover can be obtained within three to five years on abandoned mined sites depending on local conditions. The goal of our restoration and reclamation is to restore the net carbon sink function of managed peatlands and to re-establish habitat for species in Ontario rock barrens.

Our reclamation research at the Utikuma Lake Research Study Area (URSA) provides our industrial partners with an understanding of the ecohydrology and hydrogeology of natural ecosystems in order to guide reclamation on Oil Sands leases. Over the last 15 years, research at URSA has provided the most comprehensive understanding of watershed hydrology in Alberta's Boreal Plains and is currently being implemented in several reclamation strategies. In May of 2011, a large (>80,000 ha) wildfire at URSA provided an opportunity to expand our research on natural analogs. Because wildfire and mining result in predominantly dry and non-vegetated surfaces, the ecohydrological processes that control recovery and ecosystem resilience are similar between burned and mined sites. For this reason, our study of post-fire recovery in natural analogs is successfully advancing the effectiveness of current reclamation strategies.