Project Summary
Fig 1. Syncrude-Mildred Lake-before reclamation
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Fig 2. Syncrude-Mildred Lake-after reclamation
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Although the large-scale oil sands mining activities conducted in Northern Alberta create economic benefits to the local government, a large area of local land is disturbed by the oil sands tailings, which is the byproduct of oil sands mining and extraction processes. In such a case, the government of Alberta requires oil sands mining companies to completely restore the capacity of disturbed land to the natural state. Currently, companies are using local vegetable species to colonize tailings to reclaim the land. The reclamation plants will gradually increase the plant biodiversity and establish soil microorganism communities. Then, animals will return to these areas. At last, the disturbed land will 100% return to a self-sustaining ecosystem with local vegetation species and wildlife. However, the properties of tailings are extremely harmful to plants. In most cases, tailings are high pH and high salinity material. Besides, tailings also continuously release water during the storage process, which is the tailings water. The tailings water can infiltrate into the root layer of reclamation plants. And the chemicals in tailings water are also highly detrimental to plant growth and development. At the same time, tailings always have poor air and water permeability conditions, which make the roots of plants growing on tailings suffer waterlog and hypoxia. Some studies showed that the hypoxic environment can aggravate the negative effects of tailings and tailing water on reclamation plants. Therefore, we must examine the effects of tailings, tailings water, and hypoxic environment on different plant species and select plant species with high resistance to oil sands tailings. In this project, I will examine the individual effects of tailing water, hypoxia, and their combinations on the growth of reclamation tree species. Therefore, I will use hydroponic to grow tree species to remove the effects of solid tailings.