The University of Alberta's Oil Sands Research Information Network (OSRIN) funded development of this video tutorial that lays out the field sampling process from start to finish in easy-to-follow steps and visually clarifies how protocols should be enacted. This helps standardize otherwise subjective decisions, like how to determine if a plant lies within a floristic quadrat.
Extensive work, funded in part by the Cumulative Environmental Management Association, has been devoted to developing sophisticated tools for evaluating shallow open water reclaimed marshes on oil sands mined land. These tools use environmental and biological measurements to assess the condition of individual wetlands, providing integrative scores that will help industry track wetland development and may assist the government in reaching certification decisions. These tools have undergone rigorous calibration and validation, have passed the peer review process, and are published in the scientific literature. In other words, they provide a scientifically sound and defensible approach to wetland assessment in the context of oil sands reclamation.
