April 21 2016

#775: Algar: Replanting Seismic Lines Helps Caribou

Alberta Innovates Technology Futures, Environment, Forests, Wildlife

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Large seismic lines are bad news for caribou in northern Alberta.

That’s because wolves and other predators use the seismic lines, and that increases chance encounters
with caribou.

But what if you could close thosepredator highways by planting trees on the seismic lines?

As Scott Wilson explains, that’s exactly what industry tested in a pilot project at Algar south of Fort McMurray

Scott Wilson is a resource analyst with Silvicom.

SCOTT WILSON: Algar itself falls in a very lowland area, a very boggy area, so getting machinery in there to plants trees was a little bit tougher. So they would wait until the ground was frozen to be able to get machines in there, and they were able to do some mounding. Actually digging up small trenches,creating mounds, so that we’d be able to plant some trees in the mineral soils and that would give those trees a little bit of an advantage, and be able to establish where on these lines nothing has been established in over 20 years. And also allows access to some other seeds like willows and different kinds of poplar to access the mineral soils.

According to Scott Wilson, the Algar project also tracks carbon sequestration from the planting over 160,000 trees.

Thanks today to Alberta Innovates

Learn more at InnovationAnthology.com

I’M CHERYL CROUCHER