Six Strategies for Rehabilitating Land Disturbed by Oil Development in Arctic Alaska

Oil development in arctic Alaska has left a range of disturbed lands that will eventually require rehabilitation. These lands include gravel roads and pads, gravel pits and overburden stockpiles, drilling reserve pits, occasional accidental spills, and other minor disturbances to the tundra. A long-term research program investigating site-specific and cost-effective methods for rehabilitating degraded lands for fish and wildlife habitat has developed six general strategies that are applicable to the range of disturbed conditions. These strategies include 1) flooding of gravel mine sites for fish habitat, 2) creation of wetlands in ponds perched on overburden stockpiles, 3) revegetation of thick gravel fill and overburden to compensate for lost wildlife habitat, 4) removal of gravel fill to help restore wet tundra habitats, 5) restoration of tundra on less severely modified habitats, and 6) remediation of areas contaminated by oil spills, seawater spills, and drilling mud. Although most techniques are in the early stage of evaluation, preliminary results suggest that successful methods are available to create diverse, productive, and self-sustaining communities that are useful to a range of wildlife.Key words: Arctic, Alaska, disturbance, habitat, tundra, oilfield, rehabilitation, revegetation, restoration, wetlands ; L'exploitation du pétrole dans la zone arctique de l'Alaska a entraîné une gamme de perturbations sur des terrains qu'il va falloir un jour réhabiliter. Ces derniers comprennent les routes et plates-formes de gravier, les gravières et déblais des terrains de recouvrement, les bassins de réserve de forage, les terrains ayant été le site de déversements accidentels occasionnels et autres perburbations mineures de la toundra. Six stratégies générales applicables à la gamme des terres ayant subi des perturbations ont été développées grâce à un programme de recherche à long terme portant sur les méthodes - rentables et spécifiques à chaque site - de réhabilitation des terres dégradées pour la faune ...