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Soil resources of Syncrude Lease 22
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- Author(s) / Creator(s)
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This inventory of the soils of Syncrude Lease 22 has been prepared as part of an environmental baseline data collection program conducted by Syncrude Canada Ltd. The soil inventory is presented in report and map form. Intensive sampling and mapping was conducted during the summer of 1984, which was supplemented by analysis of key soil properties in the laboratory. The following points summarize the distribution and characteristics of the soils on Lease 22: 1. Poorly drained mineral soils and peat wetlands constitute slightly more than half (54 percent) of the lease area. The poorly drained mineral soils occupy 25 percent of the soil landscape and Organic soils, which have greater than 40 cm of peat, occupy 29 percent. 2. Freely drained mineral soils make up only 37 percent of the lease surface. This land area includes well, moderately well, and imperfectly drained soils, developed on glaciolacustrine clays and glaciofluvial sands. 3. River banks, stream channels, and disturbed land constitute nine percent of the land surf ace. 4. The majority of the mineral soils are fine textured Luvisols and Gleysols. These clayey textured soils occur over approximately 35 percent of the lease. Sandy textured soils, including Brunisols and Gleysols, occupy approximately 10 percent of the lease. 5. The peat deposits are seldom thicker than 2 m and are more commonly less than 1 metre thick. Of the estimated total volume of 66 million cubic metres of peat on the lease, approximately 51 percent occurs as deposits within the thickness range of 150 to 250 cm. Approximately 32 percent occurs as deposits of 50 to 150 cm thick, and 17 percent is in the 15 to 50 cm range. 6. Permafrost occurs sporadically in peatlands, with its presence usually coinciding with mounded bog peat landforms. 7. The Soil Map, presented in two halves at 1:20,000 scale, identifies the soils by series name and map unit, which have been correlated with the Alberta Soil Names File and with the names established in the reconnaissance soil survey of the area. 8. Soil patterns in the area are generally quite simple, with large homogeneous soil units. The major criteria for differentiating soils are parent material and drainage conditions. Extrapolation of data within and between soil map units can be done with a fairly high degree of confidence due to this homogeneity.
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- Date created
- 1984
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- Type of Item
- Report
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- License
- Conditions of Use Knapik, L.J., K. Bessie and E. Richardson, 1984. Soil resources of Syncrude Lease 22. Syncrude Canada Ltd., Edmonton, Alberta. Environmental Research Monograph 1984-1. 63 pp. plus appendices. Permission for non-commercial use, publication or presentation of excerpts or figures is granted, provided appropriate attribution (as above) is cited. Commercial reproduction, in whole or in part, is not permitted without prior written consent. The use of these materials by the end user is done without any affiliation with or endorsement by Syncrude Canada Ltd. Reliance upon the end user's use of these materials is at the sole risk of the end user.