Shelter Belt Planting in Saskatchewan (2021)

Our organization did some tree planting work in Saskatchewan in 2021 and 2022.  We've been so busy that we're just getting an opportunity to blog about this project now!  But better late than never.  We'll start with a description of the 2021 work in this post.

 

 

Shelter belts are lines of trees (or large shrubs) planted to protect areas, especially gardens and farm fields, from strong winds.  When people think of weather damage, the typical scene that comes to mind is heavy storms (hurricanes, tornadoes) or heavy rains/hail.  But normal strong winds on sunny days can also cause significant damage to crops.  When soil is dry, the wind can easily pick up soil and move it across the landscape.  For freshly planted seeds and young crops, this can be devastating.  Erosion is a significant problem for farmers, and wind erosion can be just as bad as water erosion in some areas.  If a line of strong mature trees grows along the side of a field, the wind is partially blocked by the trees, limiting erosion.

Shelter belts are an important part of agroforestry work, but they can also be useful in terms of energy efficiency.  Residences that are protected from strong winds may require less heating in the winter, and of course are also more protected from property damage.

Here's a photo of a row of spruce trees that are just a few years old, placed just to the right of an existing shelter belt, with the intention of eventually strengthening the existing shelter belt.  You can see a valuable crop field just to the right of the newer part of this particular shelter belt.

 

 

Adam Gruel has been our lead representative on our Saskatchewan projects for the past couple of years.  We don't have a large footprint in Saskatchewan, but we've always enjoyed the work that we've been able to do there.

Here's a photo of Adam on one of the planting sites:

We source our Saskatchewan seedlings from the PRT nursery in Prince Albert, SK.  They've been great to work with, and very accommodating to our logistical challenges.

Adam shared a few reflections with us from one of the many sites he visited during his 2021 planting:

"I had previously made vague plans to host some other tree planters, and thankfully one country gentleman offered to host us while we were planting his shelter belt.  I drove from Birch Hills to Borden Bridge, more via bi-ways than by highways.  I met my companion tree planters on a particularly scenic stretch of country lane with a vista encompassing a wooded slough, several variously hued fields, and a ghostly looking farmhouse.  After a sandwich and initial greetings, we drove to the yard.  As we got out of the car, we gazed towards a landscape populated by free roaming turkeys who gobbled glitteringly towards us from out of a golden beam of light.  We laughed and squinted to see the immensity of their horde engulf our vehicles with the unfortunate screech of talons upon paint.  After a bit of planting, we elected to take a break in the heat of the late afternoon.  I played the role of big-shot fisherman guide, sourcing fishing gear for my friends, although we caught no fish.  I was secretly relieved.  Our paths then diverged, and I got back to work.

Days passed while I planted at this site, shoo-ing turkeys out of the way as I put trees in my bags.  The ground was tough.  My method was to cut and flip the sod towards the south, which, while exhausting, allowed each seedling to occupy a root-free hollow with a durable source of shade, which would hopefully maintain a cooler micro-climate.

Eventually, I was able to completely encircle this property.  Some of the neighbours also had opportunities for additional trees to be planted in various strategic locations, so I ended up helping three of the neighbours out as well.  From these generous people I received cucumbers and fresh corn, and thus picnic'd, I embarked on my trip back to Birch Hills, smacking my lips with the lingering taste of that green gold."

 

Here are a few more photos taken while Adam was working on various sites:

 

 

We want to offer a huge thanks to Adam for taking the lead on these shelter belt projects!  We hope they will eventually offer some significant erosion control advantages on a number of sites throughout Saskatchewan.

You can see more photos from Adam's planting work in our public Planting Photos 2021 folder on Dropbox (in the Prairie Shelterbelts sub-folder).

 

Thanks for reading!

- Jonathan Clark

www.replant-environmental.ca

Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests.  We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases.  We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world.  If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page.  Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website.  Thanks so much for your interest!

Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects.  Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.

 

Creek Restoration Tree Planting in the Elephant Hill Fire, British Columbia

Our organization performed some creek restoration work in central British Columbia this past August (2021).  The work was done in an area in central British Columbia, in the Kamloops region, in an area that had burned during the Elephant Fire in 2017.

 

The Elephant Fire was an enormous wildfire that occurred in central BC in 2017.  By the time it was finished, it burned 191,865 hectares.  For our readers that understand acres, that's just shy of half a million acres.

To put that into perspective, the average amount of ground in BC burned by wildfires each year between 2010 and 2016 was less than the size of this single fire.  Stanley Park in Vancouver is 405 hectares, so this fire was the size of 473 Stanley Parks.  New York City's Central Park is 341 hectares, so this fire was the size of 562 Central Parks.

Here's a graphic (courtesy of NASA) that shows the location of our project.  This satellite imagery was taken on August 22nd, 2017, while the fire was still active.  Note that North is not quite vertically oriented to the top of the map:

 

And for those of you who are unfamiliar with Clinton or Cache Creek, they're in south central BC (alongside Highway 97), as can be seen in this graphic from Google Earth:

 

Various governments, NGO's, and corporations have been working hard for the past few years to help reforest this wildfire.  That work will continue for a few more years, due to the sheer size of the burn.  Tens of millions of trees will have eventually been planted by all of the various entities combined.

A lot of the work done to date has been concentrated on land parcels that were already established within the provincial forestry GIS system.  Some of these areas were never-harvested Old Growth Management Areas, and some were previously-harvested forestry cutblocks.  However, because the Forest and Range Practices Act of British Columbia prohibits logging alongside creeks and within stream buffers, the areas that have been replanted to date often exclude those important strips.  Unfortunately, the wildfire did not respect the same boundaries.  We now have a situation where a lot of forest creeks and streams now have no tree coverage, which is bad because these watershed features are the most important parts of local ecosystems.

Our goal for 2021 was to target some of those creek buffers, to help restore the vegetation belt.  The areas that we worked in [to date] were almost exclusively pure conifer stands before the fire, so even though we planted thousands of trees on this project, we limited this phase of the project purely to conifers.  Although we love to plant deciduous species on many of our projects, we also need to mimic nature, which informed the final prescription.  The conifers will also provide better shade opportunities in the late winter and early spring, moderating the severity of the spring freshet.  In future phases, however, our goal is to include cottonwoods, trembling aspen, birch, and rocky mountain maples.  And luckily, these species are all starting to regenerate naturally too, which is very helpful to the local watersheds.

 

 

What is especially unfortunate is that as large as this fire was, it was only the third-largest fire in British Columbia in 2017.  The Hanceville Fire and the Plateau fire were both significantly larger.

If you'd like to learn more about the Elephant Hill fire, here are several media articles:

thenarwhal.ca/bc-forest-fires-restoration-secwepemc

www.coastmountainnews.com/news/rancher-helps-find-cattle-in-elephant-hill-fire

wildfiretoday.com/2017/07/31/elephant-hill-fire-in-british-columbia-grows-to-194000-acres

www.coastmountainnews.com/news/2017-elephant-hill-wildfire-most-likely-cause-by-smoking-materials

www.kamloopsthisweek.com/local-news/foi-documents-offer-closer-look-at-cause-of-elephant-hill-wildfire-4445360

You can see more photos of our 2021 tree planting work in our public 2021 Planting Photos folder on Dropbox.

 

Thanks for reading!

- Jonathan Clark

www.replant-environmental.ca

Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests.  We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases.  We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world.  If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page.  Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website.  Thanks so much for your interest!

Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects.  Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.