 Good morning, everybody. My name is Brenda Schladweiler. I'm with BKS Environmental and I'm part of the Planning Committee for the North Dakota Reclamation Conference. This year we are presenting five webinars in a series throughout March. And the first of them is today. I have some housekeeping things I need to mention at first. The webinars will be recorded and will be available at that website that's shown on this intro slide. You can use the chat to discuss ideas amongst participants. Please remember to select either the panelists you are wanting to talk to, or all participants. And if you will, just to get us going this morning, it would be good to add where you're from in the chat to everyone. And that way we can kind of see where everybody's coming in from. I use the Q&A to ask a question and we'll answer it live, but we'll hold all those until the end. And as a reminder, the next webinar series will be next Wednesday at the same time. And that webinar series will be on pipeline reclamation. So next slide. This is the obligatory non-discrimination statement. I think we'll proceed to the next slide. So with today's speakers, I had the pleasure of listening to these ladies a couple weeks ago at the Society for Range Management Restoration and Reclamation Committee seminar. And that was a virtual presentation. Also, they did a great job and I'm looking forward to listening to them again as I'm probably sure I missed a lot. So with that, I will introduce the first speaker. These guys will do a tag team approach to this presentation. And it worked really well a couple weeks ago. So that's what we're going to do today. So with that, Dr. Anne McIntosh is an associate professor at the Augustana campus of the University of Alberta. She has been conducting ecological plant community and soils research for over 20 years in diverse ecosystems in the northern hemisphere. Her research focuses on recovery of forested and grassland ecosystems after both natural and anthropogenic disturbance. She received her BSC in honors from the University of British Columbia, her MSc and forest science from Oregon State University, and her PhD in forest biology and management from the University of Alberta in 2013. She is the lead ecologist on a project focused on monitoring recovery of reclaimed well sites in Alberta that she will be presenting on today. Tracy Kepchenko is the second speaker interlaced with Anne's discussions as well. Tracy achieved a degree in agriculture from the University of Alberta in 2000. Throughout her 20 year career she has had the opportunity to work for various regulatory agencies in Alberta in both grazing management and reclamation capacities, focusing on the grassland region of the province. For the past seven years Tracy has worked for the Alberta Energy Regulator as the subject matter expert for grasslands, and as an assessor with the oil and gas reclamation group. In addition to day to day work she's an active member of the Society for Range Management, Southern Alberta Youth Range Days, Grassland Restoration Forum and Prairie Conservation Forum. And sharing her observations and experience as a professional who has had the opportunity to work in various regulatory roles related to activities on southeastern Alberta's grasslands. This presentation will be based completely on her experiences and professional opinions. Both of them today will be talking about the Alberta Grasslands perspective on reclamation. And with that, and you may begin. Thank you, Brenda. I want to begin by acknowledging that I'm on Treaty Six territory, a traditional meeting ground for many indigenous peoples, including the Muscovites, Nahiwa, Nitzitapi, Nakota and Satina nations, the Métis and other indigenous peoples. The research sites and where Tracy is in Alberta is located in Treaty Seven, also a traditional meeting ground for many indigenous peoples including the Kainai Blood, Sicsika Blackfoot, Pocani Pagan, Stoney Nakota and Satina. And so I'm happy to be here and Tracy is going to take the lead in terms of the first part of this presentation, then you'll hear from me, and then we'll go back and forth after that so look forward to presenting to you. Thank you. Thanks, Ann. And thank you, Brenda, for the nice introduction. Good morning, everybody. I'm coming to you live from Medicine Hat, Alberta, which is in the southeast corner of the province, about 60 miles north of the US border. I was asked to speak last year at which time I was working with the AER, but I've since altered my career path and work elsewhere right now. Before I just want to be clear that I am presented today on the information that is based on just my experience and my personal professional opinion, so I just want to make that very clear. As you can see the map here, just for those folks that haven't been up here before, we have the map on the left is quite self-explanatory, and the map on the right is Alberta in the red and Texas in blue, superimposed or purple. Just to give you some context, Alberta is a pretty large area and it goes from the tundra and boreal forests in the north to cultivated farmland throughout the province and down to the grasslands in the southeast and southern portion of the province, which is where we'll be speaking about today. So as you mentioned already, there, I just wanted to mention, there's five natural sub regions of the grasslands in Alberta, which is the map on the left, the map on the green on the right, sorry, it shows the remaining intact grasslands, or range lands or prairie, whichever word you want to use, and that is the parts that are in green, just to give you some idea of where we'll be speaking from and Medicine Hat is right here in the southeast corner, that's where I'm coming to you from. So in Alberta, there are, like I mentioned, all the different regions. Next, Anne, please. The photos are a pump jacks of different oil sites from the north through to the south. There is drilling throughout the province. The map on the right looks really busy, but just to note, it's not to scale since we can't zoom into each well site on the map, but each black dot is essentially a well that was drilled at some point in Alberta for ever in a day since 1883. And this includes natural gas wells, oil wells, CBM wells, oil sands exploration wells, in situ coal exploration, water injection, inner gas. So the whole gamut. And fun fact, the first natural gas well drilled in Alberta in 1883 is located just 20 miles west of where I'm sitting here today. So just a, it's, it's, we've been doing a little bit of drilling in Alberta for a while. Next, the map, this, this, I guess, graph is dated, we acknowledge that, but it shows you the economic kind of the different stages of well site in their life cycle. The thing I wanted to point out is that since 2017, due to the economic downturn, particularly in natural gas markets in recent years, there's been a significant increase in the reclaimed and certified well sites, which is the green area here. And since 2017, and a decrease in the active sites, which is the blue. So that if we had a 2020 graph updated, it would look, it would look quite a bit different. Next. So today we're talking about reclamation reclamation and Alberta is legislated. It is a requirement for the purposes of this presentation and to be consistent with my co presenters project. I'll be focusing my examples on well sites located on provincial public lands. So there are federal lands, there is private lands and there's public lands. And the rec sir criteria pertains to all land ownership and Alberta except federal labs. And the rec sir criteria is a rule book for industry to follow. So the purpose of the reclamation certificate is to document that industry has met all the requirements and can confirm that the site has met met all the applicable regulations. It essentially is the end goal. Now it has been an evolution to the regulatory approach throughout the years. Initially, pre 1989, I guess 1993, and protect the soils and just get something growing on it again. Science reclamation regulations have evolved in conjunction with construction practices occurring on landscape so everything from the type of equipment through to when and how things are built has has been also evolving. And so it has been a continuous improvement throughout the years. The current criteria. So 2010 is a current criteria. It has a greater emphasis on the ecological functioning of the area of the site and matching the adjacent offsite plant community while utilizing science based information and tools. So you'll see that with that evolution, there's still things that are coming. Hopefully down the pipe because 2010 is now 11 years old. So we'll be discussing the 2010 current criteria more detail. So this table that you're looking at right now is table two from the 2010 criteria for grasslands. It is a very busy table. There's a lot of, if this and that's there. So there is a lot of information but the reason I'm showing you this table is to show you that this, it is, it's a simplification of an extensive in depth process utilized by the reclamation practitioner or the environmental consultant whichever word you want to use to determine which process applies based on the vintage of the site. So it's a decision tree based on site specific information such as the construction and reclamation timeline to determine the minimum reclamation requirements that apply for landscape soils and vegetation. So your site has a unique story. So it really is essentially it's kind of a, if this then that scenario and if you remember those old books we used to have choose your own adventure books it's kind of like that where, if you know your site was built pre 93 and it was on grasslands and it had this type of construction practice blah blah blah so you have to follow the steps. And that is kind of really like choose your own adventure. So this is part of the record criteria which is very detailed. And if you can see me it fills up a three inch finder, which I keep on my desk, and it's definitely a reference so it's a monster. But let's do a little bit of walk through a little bit of history lesson here. So in the 80s to 1993, based on the knowledge at the time in the 80s, the government of Alberta recommended seating a pressed wheatgrass onto industrial sites on public grazing lands or grazing leases. Now over time we realized that those decisions had unintended consequences. This area in the photo that you see is in a dry mixed grass sub region, which is near medicine hat. This area of the dry mixed grass is predominantly cold season native grasses, which are best utilized after, well, generally speaking after June 1 of each year for grazing. And as you may know or not pressed to be grass is an early season tame grass species that is known to begin growing, even under the spring snows. So it's very useful grass and providing early season grazing and deferring the use of native range pastures. However, once Chris to be grass that seed, it's not preferred by cattle in comparison to native grass seed species. Sorry. The mixing of these two grasses as you can see in a line here the pipeline that was seeded to Chris to Chris to be grass is quite visible in amongst the native prairie. And the mixing of these two grass species is essentially created an oil and water scenario for range managers. So if this pasture is used later in the season to benefit the native grasses, the Chris to be grass is not utilized and therefore gets stronger and spreads. And I just I haven't figured out how to train a cow to graze just a strip of grass just straight down the pipeline and not touch the grass the native grasses off site. Haven't figured that out yet. But what does remain is a visible scar landscape, obviously you can see that, in which the reclaimed area does not match the adjacent plant community. Plus there's a soil seed bank grow from years of growth. So we're talking 40 years now of seed bank in that soil, trying to get rid of that secret of that Chris to be grass now is, is next to impossible. The, the one thing that I wanted to point out is that once these unintended consequences are recognized the government of Alberta now prohibits the use of press to be grass and similar agronomic species for reclamation on provincial public lands. So that's one example of, of whoops, we shouldn't have done that now what so now it's there we can't get rid of it. In 1993, or in 1993, there was the concept of equivalent land capability that came about, you can see the definition there I won't read it to you. The legislation that governs the reclamation criteria so I meant, I meant to mention that earlier. The reclamation in Alberta is legislative it is mandatory so it is under the Alberta's environmental reclamation and enhancement act or appear and under appear. It has this equivalent land capability, and it regards all industrial upstream oil and gas, but it does recognize that not all land uses are identical so the end of that definition, but individual land uses are not necessarily identical is is really important to remember. In 1995, a new reclamation criteria, or a reclamation criteria was developed with new intent so using ELC equivalent land capability, it recognizes that recognize a different land uses. So it has criteria for cultivated lands has criteria for forested lands has different criteria for grasslands because they're different ecosystems. And now recently we even have a peat land criteria. And it recognized the need for consistent assessment approach, and that the controls to comparisons had to be adjacent to the site not a mile or two miles away. The, the other thing to mention is that Alberta's, I'll just say that Alberta's reclamation criteria driven by ELC has evolved and shows the evolution of reclamation as a science so in 1995 reclamation at the time focused on conserving soil typically through stripping of the soil or pushing the soils, stabilizing the land preventing erosion and weeds. This in 1995, the criteria of the regulation identified the importance of the physical chemical and biological aspects of the land through a detailed site assessment or DSA, which includes observations and record keeping for topography drainage hydrology soils vegetation, and their quality that can be observed or measured in the site without a whole bunch of equipment. And the, like I mentioned the controls are adjacent to the site. And then one thing to mention in on public public lands or on grazing lands, provincially held grazing lands in Alberta, the seeding on crown lands at the time utilize native cultivars, which focused on construction rather than biodiversity and matching the offsite species. So that was the, that was the drive in 1995 they were good goals, but as a science and construction practices progressed over the years the goals did too. So based on the table that table to that we looked at earlier. So the sites that and I would be talking about that sorry the sites that and we'll be talking about in our project would fall into this regulatory timeframe of 1993 to 2010. If you refer back to that table to therefore the sites would not qualify to be assessed under the most current 2010 criteria, which I'll discuss in more depth after and talks to you about her project. Thanks Tracy. Yeah so today I'm here to talk to you about the ecological recovery monitoring project or the ERM project. This is a project that dates back to 2012 is when I became involved in it and it predates predates my involvement as well. And this is a project that's really interested in addressing what becomes of sites once they receive that reclamation certificate. So there's these knowledge gap in terms of, excuse me. When, when does the site actually go back to being equivalent land capability or having recovered as the terminology we tend to use in in the ecology from the ecology perspective in the ERM project. So I just want to premise this by saying this was initiated by Arnold Jans of the government of Alberta, who is a long term practitioner and policy person, and we're doing all sorts of great monitoring and was really the driver, the driver behind this project so he reached out to the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute in 2012 and said we need to figure out what's going on with these with these sites after they receive the reclamation certificate. So that's not where the project that I am going to talk about comes in. And what we're trying to do is to address the gaps that exist in terms of our knowledge related to what happens after a certificate is received. So we answered questions like what indicators should we measure. We were interested in soil, soil indicators vegetation indicators, potentially exploring other components as well. Looking back, essentially to see because there wouldn't have been enough time period by the time this project was initiated to follow sites over time for the most recent criteria that were established in 2010. And Tracy is going to talk about those after I talk about my project. So we were interested in looking at the effectiveness of these historic reclamation practices, are their legacy effects is their arrested succession, or are they on a trajectory back to being what they were a positive trajectory, if you will. And how long if they are on a positive succession trajectory, how long does it take for them to be recovered or return to equivalent land capability. And are interesting too, is some of the information that we learned from this project can we apply it to the newer criteria the criteria have evolved, as Tracy mentioned, but are there insights that we can share based on the information from our study. The ecological recovery monitoring project first had to develop long term scientifically robust and financially sustainable. Sorry. It says financially sustainable monitoring program for what reclaimed law pass was the goal. And then to extend that to other specified lands over time. And because that we didn't want to bite off more than when we to. So we want to start off relatively small scale. So we started off by focusing on well pads as you know one Hector ish footprint have approximately 100 meters by 100 meters. And what we did is we looked at three different land types that I'll talk to you in the next slide. And we were looking as I said back so we did a retrospective study, rather than temporarily following sites over time. And as Tracy mentioned right the goal in the past was like to conserve topsoil and get something growing. Whereas, the newer criteria avoid the use of not a dose like the crusted wheat grass and it's not just about green being good, but rather the species composition mattering. So we had to start off by developing monitoring protocols so we had to figure out what we should actually measure and you'll see which attributes we picked. This was done in conjunction with, with Alberta biodiversity Institute, with researchers with government and regulators as part of our advisory group to give us recommendations on this. So we showed and test our protocols that we developed in sample ecosystem starting in 2013 with native grasslands in forested lands in 2014, and then cultivated lands in 2015. So what I'm going to focus on in the project today is to focus on the native grasslands. And we wanted to start out with something relatively simple quote unquote more so, because my background was more so forestry before that was to say how easy it is to run the line, and that you don't have to worry so much about bears, but it turns out you have to worry about cows, and they can actually have a lot of fun with your measuring tapes and we can't but lots of learning happened along the way. So just to highlight to that we're interested in ecological recovery, as opposed to equivalent land capability equivalent land capability is the government language that's used but from our recovery perspective as an ecologist is like how do you actually measure that. So the idea is that we want the biological physical and chemical properties on the site to be similar to what those conditions would have been prior to it so it's giving a way to better quantify that so that's why you'll hear me talking about ecological recovery as opposed to recovery to equivalent land capability. So we actually measure. So we looked at, as I said vegetation indicators and soil indicators. So the vegetation indicators we looked at where we had 0.5 by 0.5 or 0.25 meter squared quadrats, and these were systematically located on the well pad, and in the adjacent reference area. And so we looked at vascular plants and non vascular plants. We also did time censuses in each of the four quadrants on the well pad and in the adjacent reference area to get a sense of the richness as opposed to the relative abundance of the individual species. And then we calculated diversity measures, richness being how many species we have and incorporating the composition the relative abundance of those species using diversity measures such as the Shannon index and the Simpson index. And just a small note here because Tracy is going to be talking about the rangeland health assessment in the 20 as part of the 2010 criteria. So while we did capture various elements of that we didn't do a systematic full rangeland health assessment. So for instance, our litter estimates, we measured at LFH depth, but we didn't get any kinds of biomass estimates for litter. Okay, so then we measured soils and we wanted to err on the side of not less is more but more is more. And then we could go back and evaluate whether do we really need all of these going forward but we wanted to try to be more more exhaustive with this pilot project so 108 samples per site. So we measured at four different depths, we couldn't do any kind of analysis at the horizon scale because the horizons get disturbed on the well path. So rather we focused on specific depths that were systematic. And so we had four depths the for the top two depths. That's where we could use our bulk density sampler which you see in the lower left. So that's where we got our soil cores that we could measure bulk density on. And the other two depths, the deeper ones we used soil auger so we couldn't get bulk density estimates for those. But for all four depths, we did measure pH electrical conductivity, organic carbon and total nitrogen. We did try to measure penetration resistance and ran into some issues with that. And we didn't have the expertise to do soil soil mites is that was something else we discussed potentially doing, although in a future year in the cultivated lands we did that so people are interested about the biology, the biotic elements of the soils. That is something that we tried to try to explore but also looking at the soil microbial community was something that we ideally would like to have done but in terms of scaling up to a monitoring program didn't seem like that was going to be feasible. With these indicators in mind we went and developed monitoring protocols using the same idea as Tracy talked about with the adjacent reference condition. And note that our monitoring protocols very much build on the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute protocols. So they have very systematic locations for the placements of the plots. In our case on a well pad, and then in the adjacent reference area. So I'm not going to go into all the nitty gritty details of these that you can access we actually have the monitoring protocols published in the Journal American Society of Mining and Reclamation so you can check those out there or contact me for more information. Just wanted to talk a little bit so we sampled 18 sites in the dry mixed grass region in 2013 focusing trying to control as much variation as we could recognizing the limitations of not knowing the historical history of the sites in terms of when they were reclaimed necessarily was it right after drilling or was it there was a gap there. So we based our time period on the post date of certification. And so we looked at 12 that were certified under the older regulations, ranging in from 17 to 30 years post certification. And then we had six with the newer newer reclamation criteria, and those we sampled eight to 10 years post certification. So as I said we tried to control variability so we had public grazing lands, low level low sites. And so that was to try to control variation as much as we could. So because we can't go in the field with you. We can show you a little bit of a virtual field trip if you will so we can go look at our oldest sites and move a little bit forward. So here's an example where we have our well pad on the left and our reference on the right. And this is about 30 years post certification. So this would be the pre 1995 criteria. And while you won't necessarily recognize the species here right we can sort of look from a far and say green is green is good here. But what you are looking at in the left there is crested wheat crops. Here 20 years post certification again well site on the left reference on the right. What we can see here is again green and green but that's why we took the detailed data and we can evaluate it so that we can picture isn't necessarily worth as much as the as the data are in this but on the left you will see for example, a lot of dandy line in the in the foreground. And finally, we can see again on the left well site and reference so this would be in the newer 1995 criteria. So what you're not seeing here is crested wheat grass. So I know that graphs can be a little bit overwhelming and looking at a lot of results can get to be sort of a headache and so I'm just going to show you one graph here. So those of you not familiar what we're looking at here is an ordination plot in particular non metric multi dimensional scaling plot. All you have to know here is that points closer together are more similar than points that are further apart. And what each of these points represents is the average mean composition of all of the looking at the plant community as a whole so we're focusing on individual species here we're interested in multivariate analysis where we're collectively looking at the plant community and the relative composition of the species within each well pad and within each reference location. The gray boxes on the right represents the reclaimed well pads that were reclaimed under the older criteria, and the blue triangles represent the well pads that were reclaimed under the newer criteria, and the black circles represent the reference the adjacent references and so when we did analysis to look at the composition of the species on the well pads what we found that they were different amongst all three of those groupings, but that you can see that the newer reclamation criteria represent species composition closer to what we see in the in the reference. And in part this is not at all surprising because of the historic practices as Tracy mentioned of the crested wheatgrass so terms of looking at the indicator species to see what is contributing to the patterns that we see here crested wheatgrass is a big big player here. Whereas in the newer sites it's Western wheatgrass and associated with the reference so that's a native species and associated with the reference are the needle and thread grass and the blue grammar grass. So my post doctoral fellow Dr Randy Luparis took a look and said okay so we see differences in terms of species patterns, but what about the actual plant plant traits. So this is a newer area of research that's less focused on the species themselves, but more so on what traits those species represent in the landscape where they are. What she did was classify using the traits of plants in Canada database, the various properties associated with the plant species that we found on the older and newer newer well pads, and the reference sites. And what she found was that for the older sites, they had very different traits in particular introduced species right. Seeds production animal disperse music preferences were some of the properties that she saw there and overall lower functional diversity, compared with with the reference conditions. Whereas with the with the 10 year old of the younger sites, she found traits like tall that they were tall and a hydro preference lower dispersal capacity. So these also were had had native native properties associated with them, and then references had a more of a zero preference. semi abundance seed production large seed weight so there were different properties associated with the reference, even with the newer criteria, but that they were more similar and it does point towards their functional properties being more similar and so less evidence to potential for arrested succession, unlike what we saw with with the newer with the older sites rather. So there's a paper published by Dr. Lupardas in ecological engineering x available open source that you want to go take a look and see more information about this, but the point being that it's not just the species composition it's not just about being non native or native, but that the traits of the actual native species matter as well. So as I said I didn't want to graph you to death here, but just to highlight some of the main findings here is the fact that we did see different soil properties and different vegetation properties on those well paths, compared with in the adjacent reference area, things like higher belt density and electrical conductivity on the well sites, lower species richness diversity and cover on the well paths, but with higher cover on the of non native vegetation on the well sites, more so in those older sites. So what we see in terms of our main take home message from this is that these well site legacies can be long lasting. So our studies only looked at sites up to about 30 years, but we still see evidence of those long lasting impacts there. And based on what we're seeing with the newer results from the newer reclamation criteria that there's more, those potentially have less impact than the older ones, which is good because that means that the practices are involved. So I don't have time to talk about it to just to note that we did do some aerial remote sensing as well using unmanned aerial aerial vehicles, drones. And so here on the left you can see an aerial image of the well path. And you can still see this is one that was spotted in 1992 certified in 2001. And on the right you see the spectral data, the vegetation cover the green being the cover. And I see that there's evidence to support that you can still see that legacy effect you can still see that footprint even even just many decades after. So I've had the opportunity here to talk to you and just briefly introduce the long term, this potential for a long term program. So we did a pilot program here right it's a start, it's definitely not a finished point. And it helped us to really leverage the a certain amount of funds to try to figure out what the best approach is and how to do things. We got away more efficient we learned like don't mess with the cows. Right, we learned that you can be more efficient with your sampling as you learn how to do it, and we learned a lot of great ecological insights through through this process. The goal is for this to become a long term monitoring program for the province to assess ecological recovery at well pads and then expand to other specified lands as well. And ideally to include the current reclamation criteria and to be able to follow sites over from time zero onwards and not have to try to go back and looking in a binder from 40 years ago to figure out what happened that can be really insightful and helpful for us to do that. At this point we don't have funding from from the government for this to happen but we are giving up that it couldn't still happen in the future. So with that I'm going to have Tracy the opportunity to tell you about now the criteria that were implemented beginning in 2010. So these are the criteria that we did not look at in our study. So as I mentioned it was recognized by industry in the government that the 1995 criteria needed to be updated, which the which ends project the year and project showed. So various stakeholders landowner industry government producer groups including beef crops everyone came together in 1998 to 99 to build the most current 2010 criteria. Reclamation and the applicable criteria have progressed as a science in parallel and that's key to to keep in mind I'll keep saying that over and over again no matter where you are in the world. Those bits it's not they're not in silos so they, you know they're everything's moving forward in in parallel and so they were moving forward with improvements in the construction practices is what what we use here is minimal disturbance. So, I'll explain mental disturbance more later, the grassland criteria is their end goal for the grassland criteria is still equivalent man capability. But the parameters and the assessment methods to measure the ELC have become more specific and stringent. And the the reclamation criteria theory for native grassland is to establish a combination of reference and several native plant species to set up the site on a positive successional pathway towards the desired plant community. Now if you look at the picture above, and you recall the pipeline photo that I had earlier of the crystal be grass scar across the prairie. If you think of that crystal be grass pipeline versus the one that you can see here in the photo. The pipeline and the photo was constructed using minimal plow it it wasn't. This was plowed in with a spider plow. It's a four inch tie in line. It was constructed in late fall when the plants were dormant. And this is this is one year after the pipeline was put in so you can see the silver arty fry or pasture sage Artemisia frigida moving into the site, which is, which is a successional or pioneer species. So this plant community here is on the trajectory to blend into the adjacent plant community within a few years, versus that visible scar of the crystal be grass. Next 2010 criteria under a PIA Environmental Protection Enhancement Act. I won't read this all to you because you can read for yourselves, but it was recognized on public provincial public lands that grasses grasses grass that didn't that didn't fly it didn't cut it. So we went from crystal be grass to seeding the native cultivars, which was often green needle grass northern western wheatgrass and stream bank wheatgrass or slender wheatgrass. And so it didn't match the offsite it wasn't necessarily the same species as on as offsite. So the grass lawn criteria applies to the report I'll talk about here the detailed site assessment now. To how do you measure it how do you know what species are there and so it is in the detailed site assessment report which essentially is the report card if you will, for the site. It measure it looks and measures I suppose the soils vegetation and landscape on the well site, and they use it adjacent controls it's conducted by an experienced professional recognition practitioner. And the key is that the range management tools, there were range management tools incorporated into the rec cert criteria for grasslands. That is really important to note. So I just want to touch here and a little bit of history lesson. Speaking of long term monitoring. The Alberta range land research that we have in the province here began at one for research station back in 1927, which is actually right close to the, to the Montana border, just straight north have her. And so that's 90 plus years of range land research that has been utilized to develop some really important tools for range management next. These tools are next slide please. The tools here that you see are the range plant community guides for each natural subrogate that I mentioned earlier throughout the province. These three books that you see here that for the dry, mixed grass mixed grass and the foothills best use some examples of those books that we use, which are essentially reference. The plant community guys for the reference plant sites, and those are all based on Exclosures sites that we have going back to the, the Exclosures sites are back to the 70s and it uses a range management research from the 20s. So that's pretty long term. Those books are now utilized during the detailed site assessment. Next. During the vegetation portion of the detailed site assessment. The, the plant community guides are utilized to determine where that site is in compared to in comparison to the offsite controls, if you will, and the reference plant community for that specific plant community that the site is located in. So the key is that the grassland detailed site assessment utilizes science based range management tools. So that's kind of a neat combination or correlation or incorporation I guess you could say of range management and reclamation for the grassland part of the province. This report card, the DSA is it shows that it helps to show the functionality of the site. So what are the species, what is the plant cover, what is the bare soil percent cover? Are there any weeds? Is there litter, the old grass left on site compared to offsite? And it's used to determine whether site meets the equivalent man capability because it is measuring it in comparison to the offsite control. But again, the parameters and assessment methods to measure that equivalent man capability have become more specific and stringent based on this science scientific foundation. So that's the science aspect of it and that is really, really important. Why does this all matter? Why do we want to measure things and have a report card and why do we, why does industry even besides the fact that they're legislated, but why does it matter to them? Well, how do we get buy in from industry? This photo here is an example of how we get buy in from industry. This site that you're looking at is a shallow gas minimal disturbance well site, natural gas well site on native grasslands. So this site was built under frozen ground conditions one year prior to this photo. You can see there's hardly any impact there. So the cost savings for industry, they'll look at this site and say, oh my gosh, okay, to reclaim this site now, I've got a whole lot less area that has been disturbed. So the soils haven't been disturbed your soil microbes and all the things that that Anne was measuring in her report, those haven't been disturbed. There may be some compaction but the grasses and the vegetation and that soil, the prairie sawed if you will the moss like and layer that we have is still intact. So it's still considered intact, intact prey. That means that it's faster. Technically, it could be faster and the minimal disturbance sites have a much higher and faster timeline, I guess, to reach that certification goal. Then that also leads to happier landowners, which the cattle can graze right up to that well site intact ecological landscapes. It's a win win win. Now, in comparison to full disturbance sites and grasslands where the soils have been pushed and moved and the vegetation has been disturbed. There's a higher cost to reach the end goals and the criteria. In order to obtain a rexert which the rexert is then that closure once they obtain the rexert that's the closure that means they've achieved all the requirements and they it is done it's closed so their, I guess, liabilities are then reduced by obtaining that rexert. I could get that's a whole other presentation I could get into that, but I won't. This is an example of collaboration, what you're seeing here is multi oil well pad on dry mix grass prairie. It's an it's another example of collaboration between numerous stakeholders. And the key to these sites of being minimal disturbance is communication between all the different groups through all the stages of development, including, if not most importantly, the planning aspect of it the planning part of it the pre disturbance where when how another example is this is another shallow gas well site oil tubing rig out in the distance, set back from this ephemeral wetland up higher, and it's in late fall that they're doing the operational work on it you can see the 400 barrel tanks put off in the distance to hold any saline water produced it's it's the planning the logistics so that when it comes to end of life next picture or slide sorry at the end of life, if things are done well and and thoroughly at the front end that correlates directly to the success rate of the back end or this or the reclamation slash closure of that site. Here's another example of a minimal disturbance shallow natural gas well it's not level they didn't strip any soils they didn't push anything they built it in winter and you can see the grass has been laid down just from driving on it, and a little bit of impact here, but then the important thing is that the prairie saw it still intact and with a little rain, it'll come back, and that is so important so looking back on the foot past 40 years of reclamation we've learned that planning is critical. We've learned how site location time and construction time type of equipment construction methods, they're all keys. And so I just wanted to show you some of these examples. There are lots of examples of full disturbance still occurring on the grasslands I'm not going to lie, but these I just wanted to show you some of the good news stories. Good news story being a good neighbor. This industry client wanted to put a compressor station here it's in a highly visible highly high tourist area the neighbors were just outraged that there would be a compressor station scar on their landscape. They got together they worked it out and this is what you're looking at now this is actually a compressor station built to look like a farm. You don't drive by it on the high well time don't even realize it's actually a compressor station. So, if you challenge industry and the current thinking it's amazing what solutions industry can come up with it but it really it takes collaboration it takes communication. One thing I always like to throw in is this slide is it's so important that in reclamation we often want to just see things down fertilize it get it growing fast and fix it fast and often we forget that on natural natural landscapes on native grasslands. Those processes how our thousands of years of evolution have gone into building them. And so we need to make sure that sometimes we need to take stock on what we do is it actually helping the process move, or is it impeding it so my favorite saying is less is more. And that's, that's where this slide is really important is when we're doing our planning or we're thinking about our reclamation plans, or we're looking at research or anything is, we need to think big picture. We need to talk about one well site, one pipeline, we only do reclamation for pipelines or we only do reclamation for well sites. We need to look like step back and look at the 30,000 foot level and look down at the big picture to see where are their winds where are their gaps. Where can we work together with different people. So that takes me to this slide here. The importance of planning ahead I think I've drilled that into everybody's head, but when we're planning we also need to look back, we need to look in the rear view mirror and, and look at being being site specific but also look at the big picture and avert those unintended consequences like for our Crested Wegrass scenario that we have up here. And I will say I do like Crested Wegrass, and it has its purposes in a field by itself where you can manage it properly so I just want to point that out it's not a, it's not evil. It just has created some really interesting challenges. The other thing that's important is the right fit. We need to make sure that we have the right fit so clean equipment the right equipment, good operators, people with the right experience. What timing are we doing our work? Are we using minimal disturbance practices? Can we minimize the amount of soil and perry saw that is being disturbed? Do we need to cut the top of that hill off? Can we find some self leveling rigs that can, that can work in slightly all, you know, uneven terrain. And then we also have to monitor the sites after for weeds and overall site recovery. And that thing about being a recipe is, this is my and Anne's recipe that we kind of come up with, but in the end on the grasslands what we really need is rain and time, which we can't control unfortunately. Go ahead, Anne. Thanks. Yes, and another thing that is essential and what we've already heard Tracy talking about is collaboration and cooperation amongst stakeholders. So, you know, we can see these pronghorn in the lower right here and think about the headbutting. And that's traditionally I think the perspective that we think about like regulator and researcher perhaps a regulator and industry. And I think Tracy and I are really a great example of where collaboration cooperation is key. We were both invited to give this joint keynote. Well now webinar, because we're not able to come to in person because of COVID. But the fact that we can work together on this and learn from each other is really, really key and a great model of that I would say. Another thing we need to do in terms of making sure so we need the native species composition matters. So we also have to make sure that we have the right kinds of seed mixes to match the control. And then seed mixes and that can be a real challenge to find those at this point in time. And we also don't want to recognize that there is the serial evolution right there's a serial progression, successional trajectory that we want to follow. So we can't just plant late successional species and expect that that's going to work so we have to be strategic in terms of putting in the ones that should start out and then that the pioneer species, and then set the stage for there to be the seed presence in there to then have succession be able to happen. So it's not just about having a particular species, it's about having the right structure and function to support that positive successional trajectory back to what was there before. And that in large part starts with planting the right thing and doing all the right practices to begin with. So we're learning a lot we've learned a lot through our project and there's lots of other great research activities that are going on. And really I think we need to continue to expand that research to better understand how the successional trajectories are going to move forward under the different reclamation practices in the past and in the current and continue to explore how best to measure them. And if there's more ways that we can be more efficient to do that, then that would be great because of course time and money right are very challenging and Tracy will talk a little bit more about that coming up here. But ideally we want to be measuring from time zero to you know if we could have like the predisturbing stuff and have it somewhere that's accessible that we can find it. Part of the challenges that when we look back at some of our sites we can actually find the information for them in terms of their history. So, following the sites from time zero and then repeated measures over time is going to give us a lot, a lot of great insights on in terms of recovery patterns. So, we want to continue to use science to inform the criteria. This does not come though without challenges for for all of us. And Tracy I'll tell you about those. Yeah, no, I think, well, and I, we're, this is probably originally have five slides for this one, just the challenges there's always going to be challenges and I think that what we come up with is, like Ann said, we've learned a lot from each other and also in the last 11 years or even since 2013 when Ann started that project, there is a lot more information readily available information now for a lot of other sites so things again have progressed and evolved. But we were there's always room for improvement and even the best laid plans. They have to be adaptable so that is another challenge that we run into because the, it's never black and white on what we do we have a plan and then something happens and it changes so in the grasslands there's many shades of brown, essentially, with not just the ecologically but even your funding your people, the fact that you get a drought or you have a fire, there's always something going on that's affecting your sites or your off sites. And the, the thing is what is good enough, you know, we know what the lessons that we've learned. Again, we can have plans but then how do we balance out those plans with the cycles that we're in so we have. We have closure from a record perspective for industry that they have that report card and the criteria that they have to follow, but how do we do a research project that can be resilient and robust enough to withstand all the different cycles that it has to go through so there's your one year funding cycle for grants there's your two year grad school grad student cycle there's your four year political cycle that might impact your project there's drought cycles there's always different cycles but then how do you get something to actually measure the ecological cycle of a site. How do you make it resilient and robust enough to withstand all that. That's the magic question. That's, I think we spent hours talking about that. Maybe just maybe just go to the next slide. Yeah, and yeah, go ahead. Oh yeah and I would say yeah we don't have all the answers right we're still scratching the surface but I think we appreciate the need for how flexible and adaptable frameworks have to be related to reclamation and to the research into it and to make sure that it recognizes that it's not a single snapshot in time that we need, and that there's a moving target in terms of what our long term goal here is, and that we need to make sure that we're monitoring over the longer term to better understand this and always be inputting that new information so rather than having a static point in time to keep going back and measuring and adapting and using science to inform policy. And to make sure that the message is getting from the researchers to the policymakers that to make sure that these changes can be implemented and supported and working back and forth to right rather than being silent so that's really really important. Yeah, and in the end will always just do our best with the information that we have at that point in time that's that's really what that's all we can do is do the best you can with what you got. And that's something that you know when we talk about trajectory that's the next question well how do we know. And it's important to ask the questions but it's just as important to look back and see well what have we already learned what are the gaps maybe someone else already has some information we could use. So it's, it's been a great opportunity to learn and collaborate, but things are changing so fast that I mean this is a perfect example webinars versus an actual conference. Yeah, this is a good example but anyways, it's continuous improvement to sum it up. And that's pretty much a wrap. I agree yes so thank you very much Tracy so yeah I really appreciate having the opportunity to do this presentation with Tracy. Thank you to Brenda to Miranda and Scott for and other reclamation organizers and North Dakota for hosting us. So thank you to all of the project team that's been involved in the RM. I big shout out to Arnold Jan so just retired from Alberta environment and parks after a whole long career in conservation and reclamation of well pads and really appreciate all that he's brought to this project, as well as all the other project team members and most recently my postdoc Dr Randy Partis has been instrumental in terms of all the information she's found, and the restoration of working landscape team members that have been involved in the in the functional traits as well. And of course our field crew members and all of our funding sources so really grateful for all of them and our partnership with Intertech Alberta and also instrumental. They were the ones running the field teams. Okay. All right. Are you guys. Do you have another slide. Yeah, I was just going to say thank you very much thanks Brendan and Brandon everybody for the invitation. Just everybody. My old team. Thank you especially Kevin ball Corey Zadko. Ashley Easton there and share Kevin red and Karen Scott thanks so much for all your input and help. And yeah thanks for the opportunity nice to talk to you guys. All right. Thank you guys. I have some time for questions. It's my understanding that we can go after the top of the hour a little bit so people need to leave they can. And if not, we'll stay here for a few more minutes and answer questions. So, in the, in the Q amp a Tom had a question. What is your standard treatments for soils amendments, conditioners fertilizer, etc on these pads and how was the treatment process, or how has the treatment process changed over the last 10 years. That would be if anything a question for Tracy because I'm only deal with them after they've received the reclamation certificate so. And that's a catch we don't often know all of the information in terms of the history. That would be really meaningful to know but that ends up getting lumped in into all of the site level effects that we analyze in our study. So I don't know Tracy because you also deal with them after, after they've been reclaimed. I did in my old job. So, I guess, amendments essentially on on grasslands on public lands are not allowed. They, the fertilizer has been found to actually set back the native species, because the grasslands evolved in a nutrient and moisture challenged environment. The key is to not disturb as much as possible. I see there's another, there's another point that I didn't make is that when there are sites that have to have 24 at 24 seven access like our oil sites that need full bill roads, or more supported roles I guess we've used to track trails so we've put gravel in the tire tracks to support the weight and the equipment. And really if it's pouring rain, you don't go out there, and the sites that have to have access 24 seven for for example to pull product out from from well sites from oil 400 barrel tanks for example when they got to have tanker trucks go in there. Those roads do have full builds, they do have special approvals to build full gravel roads to get in and out. So I was, I was showing you pictures that I have taken those are all my own personal pictures. I'm sure if I was to go into the database I could find all kinds of examples of full bill roads, teardrops, full access sites. There's, you know, there, the key is, the key is planning from the outset so the old sites that needed 24 seven access. They, yeah, you don't want equipment getting stuck or sink into their axles or, you know, running things up so that's where we would have a gravel road built to those sites. I don't know if that answered that question but I seen another question in the chat box and distracted me. I'm glad you addressed that. So a couple people have asked about compaction issues. Why do to relieve compaction. Well, that's the key is the. It all goes back to the site. What's the level of access or what level of disturbance is required for these sites so like I mentioned before the oil sites that need. full access they'll have loads. Compaction on prairie. What what I found personally is that if that moss like in layer is is present and the vegetation is present. Even if it is compacted it will continue it will come back and the, the key is to not cut through that with tires so that's where the two track trails of to the entire tracks basically have gravel laid on top of the prairie soil once that road was stopped. Once they use stops of that road the grass in between the tire tracks is essentially a seed source it will come back up through the grass. So we're not as I haven't seen I haven't been as concerned about compaction. If you think about historically that we've had, you know, really historically, you've got millions of buys and going through the countryside, the vegetation can handle. It's the moss like in layer that we have in Alberta that we deem true native prairie and I know there's a difference to opinion when you go south of the border with my friends from Montana and North Dakota so it's a little bit different soil types, and it is different plant types that you have at North Dakota. So I would just encourage you to go back to your site specific go back to your site of where you're working and look off site and see so some things that have been done for compaction relieving compaction has been road was picking or para tilling with just in the tire tracks. But the main thing on the grasslands is it's recognized the main thing to protect now is vegetation more so than soils. If your vegetation is present and your soils haven't been disturbed, then it will heal it will come back. It's just that we have top soil that's maybe maybe six inches max down here, not even we have places where there's an inch of top soil. So it's maintaining the vegetation that we can't reestablish. Okay. All right. That is it for the Q&A in the in the zoom but I have a question for you, since we'll go a couple minutes long. Your land uses are basically a domestic livestock and wildlife. Is that true on the grasslands? livestock recreation so hunting and we're on provincial public lands. Yeah, that's predominantly it. Okay. Do you have a vegetation diversity criteria that needs to be met as part of that as part of that certification. The biodivert like so the species composition. Yes, that's part of the detailed site assessment vegetation portion of the vegetation portion of the detailed site assessment and that's where they the comparison is offsite as well as using your plant community as well as those range management guides that I showed you in the one slide there that are for the different natural sub regions. So you can go to, for example, if you were on a site that has that is based on the soils and the terrain, we have determined plant communities for the entire natural area. So they all have codes and the code base is based on vegetation reference species, soil type and terrain so is it a blowout site is it a loamy site is it a sandy site and so on. So that will tell you what your reference is what your criteria of where you want to get to whatever. What did you call it Brenda. Yeah, so essentially that is that is giving you your guide of what your criteria is for that my community. Okay. One last question. Maybe for and on this one. If money wasn't an issue what, what gaps in research would you feel. Oh gosh. We'd explore a whole broader suite of indicators, for instance, we do a whole bunch more sites right so ideally like if we could look at the microbial community in more depth right is like a relative composition of bacteria and fungi. If you look at the mic communities right what kind of invertebrates do we have in the soils and is that affecting what we see there. So it's the intensifying the sampling. Yeah, and then looking over time, basically to better have a better understanding across much diverse or landscape, the patterns of succession that we get to observe under the different criteria. So for instance we pick loamy eco sites public grazing lands right that story is going to be different. If we're on undulating terrain, if we're on a different eco site right for on a different soil right for on a full net six right like every, there's so much variation there so so right and challenging and sites were all full strips so all the soils were pushed in those on those sites so there there is definitely add mixing and there is soils that have been impacted because of that construction practice of the time. And so the thing to make for research. If I could add to that to a little bit is, is this trajectory thing actually working is it helping or is it we are seeing changes in species composition with changes in in rain patterns and climate change if you will use that scary word but we are seeing a drying of a dryer conditions and so longer timelines to actually allow for natural recovery or to allow for species to establish successfully so the, the thing is. When somebody asked about compaction if I could add back to that the compaction thing that we have is are a stop gap if you will is on crown lands of public lands. You only work and dry or frozen conditions so if it's wet, you don't work, you shut down, and that is really expensive for a company. So they don't operate until they get to the dry months when it probably won't rain or winter months when it's frozen. So dryer frozen conditions is is the goal that is the condition of their approval. It has a reduction in compaction and stuff so it's the planning, it's the conditions, it's the policies and everything to support it for those and goals. Is that working. I don't know that's and that'll analyze that in a few years. Okay. If someone gives me money to do that. I don't believe there are any more questions so any last comments from you guys before we go. Thank you for the opportunity to present some, hopefully somebody everybody gained something from this. Thank you and if there's any questions and had our, our emails on that last slide there so happy to help or answer talk whatever. Okay, and that is a great, that is a great reminder that the recording will be available on this presentation. And as a reminder for next week, we will be talking about pipeline reclamation so with that I thank you ladies. I'm sure our paths will cross again so thank you to all the participants. Thank you.