#818: Sandhill Fen: New Peat Formation
Mining for oil sands means removing the boreal peatlands that have built up over thousands of years.
One of the questions that Syncrude is addressing with its Sandhill Fen experiment is whether it’s possible to recreate those peatlands.
Ecologist Carla Wytrykush says researchers are already seeing positive results.
CARLA WYTRYKUSH: And after two or three years we saw evidence of peat formation. So the mosses came in. We didn’t plant them. They just came in on their own. So you can see last year’s moss growth that isn’t decomposing, and then this year’s green moss growing over top. So that’s something we’re going to track to understand what’s the rate of that peat formation? And is there anything we can do to speed it up? Another big function of peatlands is that they are carbon sinks. So they retain the carbon from the atmosphere. And already that wetland is a carbon sink. So it’s accumulating carbon from the atmosphere. And this is something I wouldn’t have expected to happen so quickly and so this is very exciting. Already so early on we’ve got those key peatland functions.
Carla Wytrykush says Syncrude is now planning a second created wetland called Kingfisher.
Thanks today to Syncrude.
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I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Syncrude
Program Date: 2016-10-27