Innovation Anthology #670:
Mining in the oil sands area of northeastern Alberta means digging through peatlands or fens that evolved over many thousands of years.
So how do you recreate those fens once mining is completed?
Jessica Piercey is an environmental scientist with Syncrude. She oversees an ambitious project to reclaim mine pits to peatlands.
JESSICA PIERCEY: It’s our east end pit mine. And it was about 50 meters deep. So now it’s filled back in with tailings and we’ve built the wetland and its watershed on top of that.
The Sand Hill Fen research project covers over fifty hectares. But the big question is, how can the company put back a peatland that took Mother Nature centuries to build?
JESSICA PIERCEY: We’re really trying to set up the conditions for a peatland or a fen to develop and learning what those conditions are and how we can try and apply them in future applications to optimize our success. So we’re not saying we’re going to have a peatland overnight. Far from it. But we want to learn as much about how to properly build a peatland so we can potentially have them as part of our closure landscape in the future.
According to Jessica Piercey, researchers have already discovered peat forming moss in the Sand Hill Fen.
Thanks today to SYNCRUDE
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I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Syncrude
Program Date: 2015-03-05