Short-term effects of wildfire in boreal peatlands: Does fire mitigate the linear footprint of oil and gas exploration?

ABSTRACT: Exploration practices for oil sands developments in the boreal forest of western Canada create a network of thousands of kilometers of linear features, particularly seismic lines that dissect these forests posing significant environmental challenges. As wildfire is one of the prevalent stand-replacing natural disturbances in the Canadian boreal forest, it is an important driver of environmental change and stand development that may contribute to the mitigation of such linear industrial footprint. Here, we evaluate the short-term cumulative (also known as combined) effects of seismic lines and wildfire on biodiversity and site conditions. One year after the Horse River (Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada) fire event in the spring of 2016, we compared dissected and undisturbed forests in burned

SUBMITTER: Pinzon J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8047916 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature