Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2017-2018
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship
North America’s largest oil deposit is in Alberta’s oil sands region where mining extraction operations remove vast areas of forest and peatland wetlands. Traditional reclamation ignored peatlands because they require precise hydrologic conditions, specific plant species, and take long time periods to develop. To advance reclamation standards that include these important ecosystems, scientists and operators collaborated on the first entirely reconstructed peatland in 2013. My research focuses on developing methods to establish plants and initiate ecosystem processes comparable to natural analogues. My overall goal is to introduce practical strategies to reclaim peatlands in heavily impacted areas around the world.