Grants and Contracts Details
Description
Years of experience have demonstrated that excessive compaction ofreclaimed surface-mined
land is a major deterrent to successful reforestation. The five-step Forestry Reclamation
Approach (FRA) emphasizes the need for creating a suitable rooting medium that is at least four
feet deep and free of compaction. However, much of the rcsearch that led to the development of
FRA and most of the applications have been on flat to gently rolling reclaimed surfaces. Concern
has been expressed that the application ofFRA on stecp-slope mines with highwall elimination
may be impractical or may lead to slope failures, in some cases. The proposed investigation
addresses those concerns by way of a two-part field investigation. The first part is a regional
invcntory of the current practices that are in use throughout Appalachia at steep-slope operations
where reforestation is the intended postmining land use. The second part is a detailed field
invcstigation that implements the most common practices at a specially-constructed test site. The
latter part will evaluate the selected practices on the basis of operational efficiency, economics,
slope stability, and reforestation potential of the reclaimed surface. The proposed work addresses
at least two of the identified "Topics of Interest", those being "Steep-Slope Mining and
Reclamation: Evaluate stability of steep slopes" and "Reforestation: Improving survival and
quality, and encouraging reforestation". It also addresses an overall goal of improving "the
efficiency with which the coal industry conducts surface coal mining and reclamation activities."
The output of the investigation will be a document describing the best practices for reclamation
of steep-slope operations where forestry is the intended postmining land use, which is sensitive
to the differences between various subregions within Appalachia. This document will be
condensed into a draft of a Forest Reclamation Advisory for steep-slope mining. It is envisioned
that the impact of the study will be wider acceptance and application ofFRA throughout the
region and, ultimately, more reforested mine sites.
Status | Finished |
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Effective start/end date | 6/1/08 → 8/15/10 |
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