When is a seismic line no longer a seismic line?

BERA program seeks answers to better understand and measure boreal ecosystem recovery and inform restoration techniques

An estimated 1.8 million kilometres of seismic lines—corridors created to find oil and gas beneath the surface—crisscross through Alberta’s boreal forest, a legacy from the search for natural resources that started in 1929.

Historically, the lines were cut with bulldozers to make room for seismic imaging equipment, which uses energy waves to interpret the geology below the surface and map the oil and gas deposits.

Throughout the past several decades, the energy industry has continued to explore innovations. Since the 1990s, low-impact seismic techniques that aim to reduce the width and low-impact of the lines have been in widespread use. However, the effects of past techniques remain visible in many places, and part of this continuous improvement is understanding how vegetation re-establishes and wildlife returns to these legacy seismic corridors.

“The forest hasn’t regrown along those legacy seismic corridors and we are trying to figure out why and what can be done to get them back on a trajectory to a self-sustaining boreal forest,” says Robert Albricht, Supervisor, Environmental Operations at ConocoPhillips Canada. “These corridors remain because physical features like the soil and ground water have been manually altered. The result is that regrowth is different than what follows after natural disturbances such as a fire or pest infestation.”

While the lines may remain visible from the air and satellite imagery, how wildlife in the boreal forest use those corridors remains a question. Albricht is part of a major research project—the Boreal Ecosystem Recovery and Assessment (BERA) program—that has been gathering information for more than a decade to help provide some answers. (See below for more information on BERA.)

“The key question is whether these legacy seismic lines are still lines or whether they are now part of the natural landscape. How has vegetation re-established on these corridors? How do wildlife perceive them? Are they using them as preferential pathways? Do they avoid them? These are important questions to answer,” says Albricht. “It’s nuanced and complex because it involves boreal forest ecology, a wide range of plants and animals, and many biophysical factors affecting vegetation recovery. Rocket science is much simpler.”

The scope and breadth of BERA’s research has made it a fascinating jigsaw puzzle to put together, in Albricht’s eyes.

“It’s unusual to get this many researchers with different areas of expertise working on a seemingly simple question that doesn’t lend itself to an easy answer,” he says.

“Through the BERA project, we are working to enrich our understanding of the underlying processes affecting forest recovery and adding to our assessment and ecological restoration toolkits. Eventually, we hope to be able to answer the question, ‘When is a seismic line no longer a seismic line?’ and understand what it takes to restore them.

***

About BERA

• Began in 2012 with a large coalition of academic institutions, private-sector companies, government ministries and the not-for-profit Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute.

• Program goal: understand the effects of industrial disturbance on natural ecosystem dynamics in the boreal forest and develop strategies for restoring disturbed landscapes in a system that is under pressure from climate change.

• Led by the University of Calgary, University of Alberta, University of Waterloo and Athabasca University, funding was provided by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

• Four Pathways Alliance member companies—ConocoPhillips Canada, Imperial, Canadian Natural and Cenovus—participate in the program.

The program has four different teams, each with a specific research focus intended to address a key strategic management goal.

• Vegetation team, led by the University of Alberta’s Scott Nielsen
  • Looks at promoting a return to forest cover; seeks to understand the factors that help or prevent the recovery of forest cover.
  • Legacy seismic lines are now covered by shrubs and have other vegetation growing on them, but the surrounding forest has not closed off these corridors.

• Soils and ecohydrology team, led by the University of Waterloo’s Maria Strack
  • Looks at how to restore natural carbon dynamics, the changes and movements of organic carbon in an ecosystem. Trees and other plants consume carbon, effectively storing it, while organic decomposition releases it.
  • Examining possible treatments and studies to help shape best practices to recover natural carbon dynamics.

• Humans and wildlife team, led by the University of Alberta’s Erin Bayne
  • Seeks to maintain wildlife habitat and enhance caribou habitat. Research is focused on understanding how human use of seismic lines influences a return to forest cover, how wildlife behaves on seismic lines and whether this has population consequences for boreal species as well as whether it has attracted new species to the region.

• Remote sensing team, led by the University of Calgary’s Greg McDermid
  • Focuses on restoration assessment and monitoring, developing workflows and planning tools to detect, map and attribute features directly. Where direct measurement is not feasible, the team works to develop remotely sensed analogs and assess to what extent these are related to the processes and attributes of interest.

To date, the BERA team has produced dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles, including research highlights. Click here for a full list of publications. This research has added to the science of boreal ecosystem recovery and assessment and resulted in practical management recommendations and pragmatic tools (BERA toolkit). The BERA team has engaged with a wide range of stakeholders through many workshops and strategy sessions to help ensure relevance of the work to all project partners.