Innovation Anthology #394:
Getting the right plants to grow in recreated wetlands is the research topic for Marie-Claude Roy.
“M.C.” as she’s called by her colleagues is a doctoral student in wetland ecology at the University of Alberta.
Some of the reclaimed oil sands sites have tailings or process water in them. Some don’t. “M.C.” is comparing the pond plants in these to those growing in natural wetlands.
MARIE-CLAUDE ROY: Well first, when we take the open water zone, most of the zone is composed of plants that are completely submerged in the water. When I compare this vegetation in the created wetlands that have received tailings, I quickly realized that those wetlands are less diverse in species diversity. And not only are they less diverse, but they are also colonized by species that we don’t find usually in natural wetlands and in wetlands that do not contain that tailings. Yeah, it is quite an interesting result, because obviously if we come back to the objective, that is to reclaim wetlands that are equivalent to the natural ones, then this might not happen for the open water zones.
And we get about the same story for the emergent zone as well,
Marie-Claude says one of the factors affecting plant diversity is differences in water chemistry between natural wetlands and those with process water.
Thanks today to Syncrude Canada Ltd.
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
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Sponsor
Syncrude
Program Date: 2011-04-28