Innovation Anthology #457:
Reclaiming boreal wetlands after mining the oil sands requires an intimate knowledge of how these ecosystems work.
Dr. Jan Ciborowski from the University of Windsor has just wrapped up a five year study called CFRAWS on natural versus constructed wetlands.
CFRAWS stands for Carbon Dynamics, Food Web Structure, and Reclamation Strategies in Athabasca Oil Sands Wetlands.
DR JAN CIBOROWSKI: We know that a normal wetland has gently sloping sides and it’s transition from being always underwater to being wet all the time to being wet some of the time. Each of those areas has a different set of plants and invertebrates. It’s important to have that architecture there to get a normal food web. Not only that, because constructed wetlands that use mine tailings materials have lots of salt, which is natural, but concentrated because of recycling the water during mining. We need to get closer to fresh water before we’re going to get rapidly functioning food web. So the size of the surrounding landscape has to be big enough to sustain that. We discovered that.
Dr. Ciborowski presented his findings at the recent CONRAD Symposium on oil sands reclamation.
Thanks today to SYNCRUDE
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
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Sponsor
Syncrude
Program Date: 2012-02-16