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Browsing by Author "Bedard-Haughn, Angela"

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    Multi-Horizon Predictive Soil Mapping of Historical Soil Properties Using Remote Sensing Imagery
    (MDPI, 2022) Sorenson, Preston; Kiss, Jeremy; Bedard-Haughn, Angela; Shirtliffe, Steve
    There is increasing demand for more detailed soil maps to support fine-scale land use planning, soil carbon management, and precision agriculture in Saskatchewan. Predictive soil mapping that incorporates a combination of environmental covariates provides a cost-effective tool for generating finer resolution soil maps. This study focused on mapping soil properties for multiple soil horizons in Saskatchewan using historical legacy soil data in combination with remote sensing band indices, bare soil composite imagery, climate data, and terrain attributes. Mapped soil properties included soil organic carbon content (SOC), total nitrogen, cation exchange capacity (CEC), electrical conductivity (EC), inorganic carbon (IOC), sand and clay content, and total profile soil organic carbon stocks. For each of these soil properties, a recursive feature elimination was undertaken to reduce the number of features in the overall model. This process involved iteratively removing features such that random forest out-of-bag error was minimized. Final random forest models were built for each property and evaluated using an independent test dataset. Overall, predictive models were successful for SOC (R2 = 0.71), total nitrogen (R2 = 0.65), CEC (R2 = 0.46), sand content (R2 = 0.44) and clay content (R2 = 0.55). The methods used in this study enable mapping of a greater geographic region of Saskatchewan compared to those previously established that relied solely on bare soil composite imagery.
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    Short rotation willow to restore degraded marginal land and enhance climate resiliency within the Prairie Pothole Region: A potential nature-based solution
    (Elsevier, 2024-05-19) Shahariar, Shayeb; Soolanayakanahally, Raju; Bedard-Haughn, Angela
    Short rotation willow (SRW) is a land management strategy involving the cultivation of rapidly growing, biomass-rich herbaceous-woody plants. This practice holds promise for renewable energy production, water quality preservation, carbon sequestration, greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation, enhancement of soil extracellular enzyme activities (EEAs), and promotion of overall soil health. The rapid growth of SRW demands substantial water and nutrient resources, posing concerns when cultivated in marginal riparian lands within the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR), potentially leading to alterations in groundwater table (GWT) depth fluctuations, elevated soil salinity levels, and disruptions to biogeochemical cycles. Hence, this study comprehensively evaluated the effects of establishing SRW as a degraded marginal riparian land use practice in the PPR and attempted to answer several vital questions in the field and microcosm scale on soil hydrology, salinity, nutrients, soil organic carbon (SOC), GHG emissions, and EEAs involved in biogeochemical cycling. In a field experiment, the effects of SRW were evaluated by measuring the depth to GWT, groundwater and soil electrical conductivity (EC), macronutrients (N, P, K, and S), and SOC content in different fractions and chemical compositions during the first rotation (3-year cycle) compared with adjacent annual crop and pasture in two semi-arid PPR sites. In a microcosm experiment, GHG (CO2, CH4, and N2O) emissions and EEAs [β-glucosidase (BG), N-acetyl glucosaminidase (NAG), and alkaline phosphatase (AP)] were measured in intact soil cores treated with declining water tables and different groundwater salinity levels. No consistent land use impacts on GWT or soil EC were observed between sites. Land use in site B significantly impacted GWT depth, implying site-specific factors, such as topography and soil characteristics, may be dominant over land use effects. Under SRW, the levels of macronutrients in the soil varied but did not significantly reduce the overall nutrient content of the soil. Total SOC was highest in pasture; light fraction organic carbon and particulate organic carbon followed a similar land use pattern, i.e., pasture > SRW = annual crop. Land uses affected GHG emissions significantly in the order of pasture > annual crop = SRW. GHG emission varied with salinity and GWT but there was no interaction with land use practices. Soil EEAs were significantly impacted by different land uses, i.e., pasture > annual crop = SRW, suggesting that the effects resulted from associated SOC. Our microcosm experiment suggests that the SRW land use practice holds promise as a sustainable Nature-Based Solution for enhancing climate resiliency in PPR. It exhibits a lower global warming potential compared to annual crop and pasture. Therefore, widespread implementation of the SRW land use practice in degraded marginal land could help mitigate the effects of climate change in the region.
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    Synthesis of science: findings on Canadian Prairie wetland drainage
    (Taylor and Francis Online, 2021) Baulch, Helen; Whitfield, Colin; Wolfe, Jared; Basu, Nandita; Bedard-Haughn, Angela; Belcher, Kenneth; Clark, Robert; Ferguson, Grant; Hayashi, Masaki; Ireson, Andrew; Lloyd-Smith, Patrick; Loring, Philip; Pomeroy, John; Shook, Kevin; Spence, Christopher
    Extensive wetland drainage has occurred across the Canadian Prairies, and drainage activities are ongoing in many areas (Prairie Habitat Joint Venture 2014; Dahl 1990; Watmough and Schmoll 2007; Bartzen et al. 2010; Dahl 2014; Dumanski et al. 2015; Waz and Creed 2017). In 2017 the Global Water Futures program funded the Prairie Water project, with the broad goal of helping to foster improved water security in the region (Spence et al. 2018). Throughout the duration of this project, it has been clear that a diverse group of stakeholders (including river basin organizations, government agencies, and landowners) is seeking the same information — a synthesis of what is known and not known about the effects of wetland drainage. This synthesis of the state of the science on wetland drainage in the Canadian Prairies is aimed at assembling current knowledge based on western scientific methods to articulate what is known about the variability of drainage effects across the region. Traditional knowledge, which represents a different but complementary way of knowing the functioning of prairie watersheds (sometimes also termed catchments, or basins), and the processes driving change within them, is not discussed here. Instead, this synthesis is presented in the spirit of building such collaborations. It summarizes current western scientific knowledge on surface hydrology, groundwater interactions, nutrient export, biodiversity, carbon storage and greenhouse gas dynamics, and wetland conservation socioeconomics. The implications to water security now and in the future are also discussed.