Designing forest reclamation techniques for the tailings deposit at Mount Polley

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The assessment and restoration of terrestrial habitat following severe disturbances including mining do not adequately address plant-soil microbe interactions that are crucial to ecosystem recovery. This is evident in the simplicity and vulnerability of restored ecosystems. New research on plant-microbial networks and ecological complexity together provide a promising foundation for developing innovative tools for improved assessment and restoration practices. Following the tailings dam breach at Mount Polley (MP), BC, Imperial Metals (IM) aims to restore the affected terrestrial ecosystem. This presents a unique opportunity to develop, test and apply new concepts for assessing and restoring the terrestrial habitat. The premise of the research is that use of ecological legacies from native forest is necessary for bootstrapping recovery of the ecosystem. The timing of the research is crucial because current tree mortality in the affected area narrows the window for facilitating transfer of legacies to the recovering plant-soil communities. In the fall/winter of 2015/16, four experiments will be established at MP in collaboration with IM to: (1) determine soil legacy effects on establishment of seedlings; (2) test whether established seedlings create legacies in the soils they inhabit for facilitating subsequent generations of seedlings, leading to progressive recovery with time; (3) determine whether proximity or health of legacy trees affect seedling establishment; and (4) test effects of site preparation and soil legacy transfer on the recovering plant community. The new knowledge will form the basis for adaptive reclamation of the terrestrial habitat at MP. This project is important to IM because it will enable local remediation experimentation directly inside the tailings outflow area at MP, expeditious adaptation of the results to the rapidly changing environmental conditions for immediate use, and training of IM personnel in research and forest reclamation techniques. We anticipate this project will provide essential information to the mining sector for enhancing Contaminated Sites Risk Assessment Guidance Development in both BC and with Environment Canada, thus providing vital ecological and economic benefits for all Canadians.