Innovation Anthology #399:
Recreating the boreal landscape after mining the oil sands is a complex task.
And according to Dr. Kevin Devito, attention to water is the first priority. Dr. Devito is a professor at the University of Alberta who specializes in eco hydrology.
As Dr. Devito explains, one consideration in the reclamation is the use of material leftover from oil sands production.
DR. KEVIN DEVITO: Right now what we have, they’re producing overburden material which is often marine shale, very fine grained materials which are similar in many ways in their storage properties in the hydrology to our moraine sites that are available in nature. Also, they have sand deposits So what we’ve done is looked at moraine sites, fine grains, clay plains that are fine grained and also glacial fluvial sites that are sand or coarse grained, and looked at how water flows, how nutrients flow, and how wetlands and forest lands interact in those landscapes, and transfer this understanding at least to what the water flow would be on the oil sands.
Dr. Kevin Devito presented his findings at a recent workshop on oil sands reclamation
Thanks today to Syncrude Canada Ltd
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
,
, , , ,
Sponsor
Syncrude
Program Date: 2011-05-17