Temporal Trends of Ecosystem Development on Different Site Types in Reclaimed Boreal Forests

Abstract

Forest development after land reclamation in the oil sands mining region of northern Alberta, Canada was assessed using long-term monitoring plots from both reclaimed and natural forests. The metrics of ecosystem development analyzed included measures of plant community structure and composition and soil nutrient availability. Early seral reclamation plots were grouped by site type (dry and moist-rich) and age categories, and these were compared with mature natural forests. There were few significant differences in ecosystem metrics between reclamation site types, but natural stands showed numerous significant differences between site types. Over time, there were significant changes in most plant community metrics such as species richness and cover of plant community groups (e.g., forbs, shrubs, and non-native species), but these were still substantially different from mature forests 20 years after reclamation. Available soil nitrogen did not change over time or by reclamation site type but available soil phosphorus did, suggesting that phosphorus may be a more suitable indicator of ecosystem development. The significant temporal changes in these reclaimed ecosystems indicate that studies of ecosystem establishment and development on reclaimed areas should be conducted over the long-term, emphasizing the utility of monitoring using long-term plot networks. OPEN ACCESSForests 2015, 6 2110

Ecohydrological functioning of an upland undergoing reclamation on post‐mining landscape of the Athabasca oil sands region, Canada

“…Given that a greater proportion of the upland is under FFM cover substrate, these invasive forbs and grasses were the dominant vegetation cover throughout the upland. Similar results were observed in an upland reclamation study, which confirmed that non‐native forbs and grasses dominate reclaimed uplands for the first 5 years post soil placement but gradually decline with development of a canopy cover by planted saplings (B. Pinno & Hawkes, ).…”

Reclamation strategies for mined forest soils and overstorey drive understorey vegetation

“…() and Pinno and Hawkes (). This probably resulted from reduced resource availability in the understorey with increasing overstorey canopy closure and standing biomass as stands age from stand initiation stage to stem exclusion stage (Audet et al., ; Bartels & Chen, ; Chen & Popadiouk, ; Halpern & Lutz, ; Pinno & Hawkes, ; Zhang et al., ).…”

“…Using stratified random sampling, we sampled a total of 94 reclaimed sites with known reclamation history (Table ). These sites were part of the Cumulative Environment Management Association (CEMA)'s Long Term Plot Network, which was established in 2000 to monitor long‐term changes in vegetation and soils following oil sands mining and reclamation (Pinno & Hawkes, ). To determine the effects of substrate type, we selected sites that were reclaimed with three different substrate materials: overburden, secondary overburden and tailings sand.…”

Cluster Planting: Early Enhancement of Structrual Diversity in a Reclaimed Boreal Forest

“…This approach, largely adopted from the forest industry, maximizes individual tree growing space and growth but results in very open stands with little intraspecific competition among trees and a greatly delayed time to reach crown closure, up to 30 years or more in many cases. Reclamation sites can also experience very intense weed pressure from undesirable non-native species (Sloan and Jacobs, 2013;Pinno and Hawkes, 2015). These undesirable species can persist until canopy development reduces light availability to a point that these shade intolerant early successional species fall out of the stand, which can take decades in widely spaced stands.…”