Soil inoculation for tree seedlings in bitumen substrates

Published in Journal of Applied Ecology (2025) — Franklin, Antunes, Lanoil & Karst

This graphical abstract summarizes a reclamation experiment asking whether native soil microbial communities can help tree seedlings establish on substrates containing residual bitumen; a question with direct implications for restoring land disturbed by oil sands extraction.

The illustration captures both the experimental design and the central finding: inoculation can improve seedling growth, but the benefit depends on the tree species and on the source of the inoculum. The challenge was to communicate a multi-factor result in a single image without oversimplifying its nuance, so the figure layers the treatments visually, letting a reader grasp the overall story at a glance and the details on a second pass.