Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

Root system is probably the less studied part of plants. However, information on roots development is important in many sciences such as biology, forestry, hydrology/hydrogeology, geotechnology etc. Moreover, to evaluate efficiently the impact of root systems, specialists from different disciplines need to be involved. At UQAT, the collaboration between researchers (in forest ecology and mining environment) involved in four chairs (Industrial Chair NSERC-Polytechnique-UQAT on Environment and Mine Waste Management; Industrial Chair NSERC-UQAT-UQAM in Sustainable Forest Management; Canada Research Chair on Restoration of Abandoned Mine Sites and Canada Research Chair in Forest Ecology and Sustainable Forest Management) has started more than five years ago. The present proposal aims at pushing further this collaboration by acquiring a novel instrument that will allow a better characterization of root systems in the mining and forestry context. More specifically, utilization of the proposed equipment (Polhemus FasTrack digitizer) will allow advancing the knowledge on roots development in covers installed to avoid pollution from mine waste and to assess the use of plants with allelopathic effects as bio-barrier . The equipment will also be used in the boreal forest to evaluate the effects of climate change on the growth of aspen and black spruce and to assess growth of balsam fir saplings under black spruce and aspen canopy. At the present, there is no alternative to the approach based on root digitizing to obtain quantitative information on root development.