Foothills-Rough-Fescue-Restoration-Project
Rough Fescue Grasslands have Great Potential as a Carbon Sink
Recently it has been recognized that grasslands have great potential as a carbon sink. At a time when drawing carbon from the atmosphere is becoming more and more imperative it is very important that as a society we take full advantage of this opportunity.
Rough Fescue Grasses at one time covered much of the Northwestern United States and Canada, naturally extract large quantities of atmospheric carbon and storing it as organic matter underground in the roots.Our modern civilization has both fragmented and seriously damaged our grasslands
Urbanization, overgrazing, oil and gas extraction, mining, transportation, pipelines and recreational pursuits have all had an impact on the health of the grasslands.Rough Fescue Grasses can be very difficult to re-establish
A healthy grassland ecosystem is believed to have taken thousands of years to develop and in this environment it has not been necessary for the well established grasses to be particularly hardy or aggressive in their growing habits. Once the grassland has been disturbed, as in the case of oil exploration, the roots are exposed and the job of reclamation becomes a challenge.Kathy and Clare Tannas of ESRS took on the challenge
For the past 30 years Kathy and Clare Tannas of ESRS have worked as reclamation consultants and native plant contract growers taking on the challenges of cost effective reclamation. Their success come as a result of a lifetime of scientific research into the production and re-planting of hundreds of native rangeland species.Along the way, son and daughter Steven and Kristen joined the family business and work as rangeland consultants. Steven is currently the Breeder Plot Manager for ESRS and is also working on a doctorate degree specializing in Plug Production.
Plug Production is big business at ESRS
Over the years our production and replanting protocols have greatly improved our reclamation success rates, however, it is only since the introduction of plugs that we have been able to achieve rates of 93 – 100%Rough Fescue is still not hardy enough to survive draught conditions from seed plantings but using plugs our success rates has leapt from 50% to a rate of around 93-100%. We have plans to produce 500,000 plugs in 2009.
Current and Future Rough Fescue Restoration Projects
Our plug technique is now been around for two years and to date we have:
- Four wells planted using 50,000 plugs
- One power station
- One golf course with 2,000 plugs
- In 2009 3 pipelines and one well using current techniques as well as well as experimental research
Long term we are looking to expand restoration from oil and gas into urban development, highways, oil sands and agricultural lands.