Faster Forests
Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA)
2011 - 2020
Boreal Forest Reclamation Program
Faster Forests is boreal forest reclamation program lead by Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA). The goal of the program is to apply cutting edge silviculture practices to rapidly restore disturbances created primarily for oil sands exploration (OSE) wells. Reclaimit participated in Faster Forests from 2011-19 on behalf of several oil sands clients.
To date, the Reclaimit consultancy achieved the following with the Faster Forests program:
- Revegetation of more than 1250 OSE wellsites
- Planting of approximately 1.3 million tree and shrub seedlings
- Contribution of Reclaimit methods to improve silviculture practices for the program
Optimization of site recovery requires planting several ecosite-specific tree and shrub species within a disturbance. Reclaimit’s systems for assigning species prescriptions were used to scale up this process so that an optimal mix could be efficiently assigned to hundreds of sites. This process is still in widespread use on Faster Forest sites to this day.
Figure 1. Reclaimit Faster Forests site in northeast Alberta, treated in 2012 as viewed in autumn 2013.
Figure 2. Reclaimit Faster Forests site as referenced in Figure 1, May 2020.
