How about some good news?
University of Athabasca will apply probiotic treatments to Crowsnest Pass coal mine waste to see whether it promotes plant growth and soil recovery.
The research is part of a four-year, $500,000 project involving AU, Lethbridge Polytechnic, and the Nature Conservancy of Canada. Alberta Innovates recently awarded nearly $250,000 for the first phase of the research, which is being co-led by Bhatnagar and Lethbridge Polytechnic’s Dr. Adriana Morrell.
The team will introduce commercially available fungi and bacteria to native grass seedlings before being transplanted in a Nature Conservancy property at the Leitch Collieries in the Crowsnest Pass.
The former coal mine, now a provincial historic site, hasn’t operated in more than a century, yet Bhatnagar said the local topsoil in some areas is “pretty much non-existent.” Typically, such sites are highly eroded and can be high in heavy metals such as selenium and mercury. This makes it challenging for prairie grasses to recover or survive.
“We know that plants don’t grow well without microbes around,” he said.