We are pleased to announce YEE-O 2020 – Year End Exhibition – Online edition for this 2019-2020 academic year. This annual event celebrates the hard work and creative achievements of over 500 undergraduate and graduate students from every unit and level in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Manitoba. Unfortunately, COVID-19 led to the cancellation of this in-person event, but sharing and celebrating student achievements must go on!

Master’s of Landscape Architecture Practicum Projects

Landscapes of avulsion: proposed future ecologies for Canadian Oil Sands reclamation

Alyssa Magas

The Athabasca Oil Sands is a complex extraction industry that requires reclamation practices following its closure. An opportunity presents itself for landscape architecture in generating adaptations to climate change through the future uses of this region. An analysis of existing conditions for a site known as Tar Island, near Fort McMurray, Alberta provides a framework for the implementation of resilient ecological strategies. Phyto-remediation, alvar communities, and grasslands are proposed strategies for toxic, absent, and thin soils that remain following extraction processes. An extension of the Western Wildway Network proposes an assisted migration of grasslands across northern Alberta within the Wildlands’ goals of connection, restoration, and re-wilding. These strategies can be introduced for similar sites which leave behind an altered landscape.

Athabasca Oil Sands GIS satellite imagery context map

Large mining haul truck (400 ton capacity) situated in the courtyard of John A Russell architecture building at the University of Manitoba. Scale comparison between pickup truck and large mining haul truck (Magas, 2019, p.15).

Map of the Western Wildway Network with an overlay of the current range of the Great Plains grassland and projected grassland range within Canada (Adapted from Menke, 2017, Savage, 2011, p.22, and Rizzo and Wiken, 1992, p.50). A proposed extension of the Wildway Network includes the Canadian Oil Sands area for the assisted migration of a grassland ecozone

Timeline diagram showing phyto-remediation strategies and impacts (information from Kennen and Kirkwood, 2015) used to address toxic soil scenarios

A Syncrude tailings pond edge as seen from Hwy 63’s Syncrude Loop. The industrial past of the site is seen on the left and an implemented phyto-remediation ecology is seen on the right

Timeline diagram showing alvar community implementation strategies and impacts (information from Neufeld, Friesen, and Hamel, 2012) used to address absent soil scenarios

Timeline diagram showing grassland implementation strategies and impacts (information from Savage, 2011) used to address thin soil scenarios

A view of the proposed 10 metre wide steel-grate boardwalk that is accessible for public exploration and serves as a marked physical transect for research observations of the implemented ecologies over time

Grasslands support the needs of a variety of wildlife amongst the infrastructure of this landscape’s industrial past