A synthetic review of terrestrial biological research from the Alberta oil sands region: ten years of published literature.

In the past decade, a large volume of peer-reviewed papers have examined potential impacts of oil and gas resource extraction in the Canadian oil sands. A large proportion focus on terrestrial biology: wildlife, birds, and vegetation. We provide a qualitative synthesis of the condition of the environment in the oil sands region from 2009-2020 to identify gaps and progress cumulative effects assessments. Our objectives were to (1) qualitatively synthesise and critically review knowledge from the OSR; (2) identify consistent trends and generalizable conclusions; and (3) pinpoint gaps in need of greater monitoring or research effort. We visualise knowledge and terrestrial monitoring foci by allocating papers to a conceptual model for the oil sands. Despite a recent increase in publications, focus has remained concentrated on a few key stressors, especially landscape disturbance, and a few taxa of interest. Stressor and response monitoring is well represented but direct monitoring of pathways (linkages between stressors and responses) is limited. Important knowledge gaps include understanding effects at multiple spatial scales, mammal health effects monitoring, focused monitoring of local resources important to Indigenous communities, and geospatial coverage and availability, including higher attribute resolution in human footprint, comprehensive landcover mapping, and up-to-date LiDAR coverage. Causal attribution based on spatial proximity to operations or spatial orientation of monitoring in the region is common, but may be limited in the strength of inference it provides. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.