Restoration of a Sphagnum-Dominated Peatland Impacted by a Mineral Road by the Burial Under Peat Layer Method

A restoration project has been conducted on two peatlands where access roads
built from mineral material were constructed under power lines: at Sainte-Eulalie
and Chénéville (in the Centre-du-Québec and Outaouais regions, respectively).
We examined if burying mineral material in a bog is an effective method to
restore the peatland conditions that were prevailing before the disturbance. The
restoration by the “Burial Under Peat Layer Method” (BUPLM) consists in
excavating and burying the mineral material in situ, beneath the underlying peat
material. The surface is then mechanically flattened and revegetated using
diaspores from the adjacent untouched peatland. In order to allow comparison,
half of the road at the Chénéville site has been restored with this method, and the
other half by removing the mineral material and replacing it with horticultural
peat. In Sainte-Eulalie, only the BULMP was applied. We hypothesize that the
BUPLM is efficient at confining the nutrients introduced by the mineral material
underneath the peat layer, at recreating a surface elevation similar to the
adjacent areas and at re-establishing typical peatland vegetation.