There is a serious connection between land and the environment; how we use the land affects our climate, biodiversity, human and animal habitat, ecosystem, and just about everything we see and rely on for life.
Therefore, for any company with sustainability and social responsibility as part of their values, improving the land for optimized conditions and relationship with the environment has gone beyond returning it to its original state to improving it for more optimized productivity.
Kudos to the majority of Canadian energy companies, as they continue to prioritized land reclamation; putting in place extensive measures and resources for effective land reclamation execution. Below, we’ve outlined a few of the ways that energy companies continue to invest to improve the state of land to yield positive effects on the environment.
Improved Water Quality
The importance of water to man, plants and animals cannot be understated, making water quality one of the most important aspects of land reclamation.
Water quality involves the physical, biological, and chemical conditions required for it to be deemed usable/potable/consumable for different purposes.
Land reclamation performed by energy companies involves contamination studies, decontamination measures, ground water analysis and a significant amount of hard work and expense to ensure the water is as good, or better than it was when they started.
Improved Biodiversity
The variety of animal and plant life in an area (habitat) is important and oftentimes species of plants, birds, fish, land animals and even insects are driven away from the area during the setup and execution of a project.
Reclamation reinstates these lost habitats for plants and animals, ensuring the standards of living are back to the type of quality that existed pre-project.
Many times, the land left is in an even better state than before, which boosts the ecosystems ability to rebalance into an ideal environment to support life and beauty.
Improved Air Quality
Air quality is the measure of the clean state of the air to determine whether it is polluted. In order to combat any negative effects to air quality, land reclamation efforts pay particular attention to removing pollutants from land and water, as well as investing in revegetation activities designed to naturally clean the air by regulating the biogeochemical cycle long after the initial cleanup is performed.
Soil Fertility and Productivity
As biodiversity increases, the activities of animals (specifically their waste distribution throughout) helps improve the overall soil quality, while drainage activities improve soil bacteria activity and reduces erosion to limit soil nutrient loss.
All in all, land reclamation boosts the volume, chemistry, structure, and texture of the soil.
Provision of Habitat
Every living thing needs a home. When land is reclaimed, it can be repurposed to provide land for man to develop new homes for families and businesses. Or, more commonly, it can be rebuilt to form an improved natural habitat for animals and microorganisms.
Beyond homes, reclaimed land provides spaces for industrial advancement and in some cases, recreational and socio-economic structures can be erected to ensure previously unused land achieves its community-serving potential.
Increase in Groundwater Level
Proper revegetation also helps boost the water cycle with increased transpiration from plants, which when combined with activities like irrigation pumps then ideal amount of water into the soil. All this increases the groundwater level of an area - facilitating the supply of water for human, animal, and plant use.
Positive Environmental Effect of Land Reclamation
Undoubtedly, land reclamation holds numerous environmental benefits and positive effects experienced by man, animals, plants, and the entire ecosystem.
Little wonder energy companies invest so much time and resources in its execution.
Contact Strongfield Envrionmental Solutions today to learn how improve your water, biodiversity, and air quality to create positive effects in your ecosystem.