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OSLI is taking a LEAP to understand how reforestation and reclamation work undertaken today will impact future forests.

LEAP — Landscape Ecological Assessment and Planning — is a geospatial database/modelling project OSLI is conducting of the southern Lower Athabasca region, explains Jeremy Reid, of OSLI's Land Stewardship Working Group (LSWG).

He explains LEAP uses geospatial data regarding the location of oil and gas leases, forest types, lakes, watercourses and other pertinent geographic information to create a multi-layered digital map of the area.

The southern Lower Athabasca region runs along the east side of the Athabasca River, between Cold Lake and Fort McMurray. The LEAP study area, which is slightly larger than Belgium, covers 342 townships and includes some 32,455 square kilometres (km²). It is home to the majority of in situ oil sands operations as well as the East Side Athabasca River's (ESAR) seven woodland caribou herds.

Although the amount of oil and gas disturbance is a relatively small percentage of the total area, Reid says the level of impact is higher because of the linear nature of the disturbance. Linear disturbances cause forest fragmentation, which affects the habitat of wildlife including large mammals such as woodland caribou.

LEAP will establish a baseline of the area's current land use to help the LSWG plan reclamation work that provides the most ecological benefit. It will also allow the group to look at and evaluate work done in the past.

"We need a detailed picture of the land disturbance caused by oil and gas exploration to establish a baseline for planning and measuring our reforestation and reclamation work."

Reid says LEAP can map existing forest and disturbance areas and show what they will look like in the future. If LEAP indicates that a disturbed area will not naturally revegetate in the future, decisions will be made now about planting those areas with trees, shrubs and other native vegetation. These plantings are then added into the LEAP program to provide a future view of the reclamation work.

“LEAP really allows us to see what today's reclamation efforts will look like in five, 10, 20 and even 50 years into the future. We need to be able to prioritize to ensure our work will get the desired results,” says Reid.

One aim of the OSLI reclamation work is to improve the habitat of woodland caribou in the ESAR caribou range.

"Industry is not the sole cause of the decline in caribou population but the fragmentation caused by our activities has had a negative effect," says Reid, citing hunting, animal predators, disease and climate change as contributing factors in the caribou decline.

Under Alberta's Wildlife Act and Canada's Species at Risk Act, woodland caribou are designated as “threatened.” The federal and provincial governments define threatened as “a species likely to become endangered if limiting factors are not reversed.”

The ESAR caribou population is estimated to be 90 to 150 animals and is declining by 10 to 20 per cent a year, according to the Status of Woodland Caribou in Alberta: Update 2010, prepared for Alberta Sustainable Resource Development and the Alberta Conservation Association.

“OSLI has created this digital land base with a lot of help from the Alberta government and other industry members. One great challenge of regional planning is the task of pulling together tons of information from all kinds of different sources. Alberta Sustainable Resource Development and Alberta Pacific Forest Industries have contributed — the next step will be coordinating some of our activities to balance development with habitat retention and restoration.”

Comments

• Bubby
  September 16, 2011, 9:19 pm
  For the love of God, keep writing these arcitles.

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