Forest Floor Recovery Index: A Tool to Assess Forest Recovery after Reclamation

Resource Type
Authors
Cindy Shaw
D.R. Hoffman
M.F. Voicu
S.J. Kull
C. McNalty
Contacts
Resource Date:
2018

In the oil sands region of Alberta, governments and industry have asked for tools to assess the recovery of forest ecosystems after resource extraction and land reclamation. The forest floors, which are part of forest ecosystems, are made up of dead tree biomass (for example, foliage, branches, and tree trunks) on the ground that has partly decayed. The forest floor plays an important role in the function of forests because it stores carbon, recycles nutrients, and is the habitat for much of a forest’s biodiversity. This publication describes the development of the Forest Floor Recovery Index (FFRI) and the FFRI manual and app. It includes background information, sampling design and analysis, and methods for predicting the amount of wood that should be added to reclaimed sites to help with recovery of forest floors. The FFRI is a system that uses changes in forest floor properties over the life of a forest (about 100 years) to represent ecosystem recovery following reclamation in the oil sands region. At 118 sites within the Central Mixedwood subregion of Alberta, the thickness of the forest floor was measured and the forest floors were classified. A computer model was used to estimate the amount of tree biomass that must be added to the ground to build natural forest floors. The FFRI system is important because no other method exists to determine if forest floors are being restored after reclamation following oil sands development activities. It also provides a method that could be used in other parts of Canada