Canada’s oil sands deposits are found in northeastern Alberta, where few people ever travel. It would be easy to overlook them, except for the controversy surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline that would deliver crude oil from these deposits to Gulf Coast refineries.
There are heated arguments for and against the Keystone Pipeline, with the environmental community concerned that Canadian oil would add large amounts of carbon dioxide to Earth’s atmosphere and slow our transition to renewable energy. Others argue for the benefits of energy security and jobs.
It’s also worth considering the local effects of oil sands extraction. These deposits are largely found beneath boreal forest—a sparse open woodland of spruce and fir trees and peat-lands with rich organic soils. The boreal zone is home to a variety of migratory birds. It is also a storehouse of carbon, which is released to the atmosphere when these soils are disturbed.
Oil sands companies have established remediation schemes in an attempt to restore the boreal forest, its soils, and the pristine quality of its runoff waters, when they finish mining a particular area. Some of these schemes have been in place for decades, so it is legitimate to ask how they are doing.
A recent study by K.E. Kovalenko and his colleagues at the University of Windsor assessed the ecological condition of remediated sites. Their sobering conclusion: 20-year-old wetlands containing oil sands material have not yet reached the same level of function as their natural counterparts.
Here we can see that mining Canada’s oil sands leaves a footprint on a fragile environment that is difficult to erase.
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Web Links
Food web structure in oil sands reclaimed wetlands
https://era.library.ualberta.ca/public/view/item/uuid:23644b8f-d691-4359-b06d-cf30504dee15
Photo, taken on November 6, 2011, courtesy of Tarsandsaction via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. Support for Earth Wise comes from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY.