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Challenges of reclamation in the Canadian High Arctic : Pilot study at an active mine site on North Baffin Island, NU

British Columbia Mine Reclamation Symposium; University of British Columbia. Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering

The Mary River Project is an active iron ore mine located on the north of Baffin Island, Nunavut, in the Canadian Arctic. Since 2018–‘19, a reclamation Pilot Study focusing on natural (i.e., unassisted) revegetation has been advanced to inform how plants may recolonize at the Project. Objectives are to (1) understand disturbance and ecological succession patterns, and (2) establish reclamation trials comparing approaches adaptable to the Arctic. Study sites were established at four locations selected to represent different revegetation timeframes from 1 year to >40 years post-disturbance. Reclamation trials were then established at three of these sites with the intention of ‘resetting’ these environments to examine early colonization. Predictably, revegetation in the Arctic is characteristically slow (in the order of decades) and constrained by a challenging environmental setting (cf. Neby et al. 2022). Preliminary survey findings indicate that natural unassisted revegetation (comprising only native species) occurs and contributes to a rudimentary revegetation chronosequence. However, reclamation trials highlight the harshness of the Arctic environment, whereby surface preparations did not last and provided no functional value within one year of their application. Still, indications of natural revegetation were observed and contributed to our understanding of early colonization.

Arctic regions

Text

2024-11-06

Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89600

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/