Reclaiming Mined Lands in Arid Environments

摘要

An increasing amount of coal is likely to come from western surface mines where the thick seams are within a few hundred feet of the surface, and the growing seasons are hot and dry. An unconventional approach to the restoration of vegetative cover on mined lands in the dry western United States has been developed under Department of Energy sponsorship at the Pacific Northwest Laboratory. In this paper, the problems associated with reclamation in arid regions are first discussed, followed by a description of PNL's approach to restoration. The paper concludes with recommendations on applications and research in the PNL approach to reclamation. In PNL's approach, irrigation water so necessary for successful reclamation is supplied by water harvesting. Water harvesting, the gathering and storing of rainfall and snowmelt runoff, has been used since antiquity in arid regions to supply domestic and irrigation water. PNL's approach uses the slopes of the partly leveled and smoothed spoil banks to intercept precipitation and direct runoff to the valley floors at the bases of the slopes where the crops are cultivated. The runoff is stored in the soil and is used for irrigation. (ERA citation 08:043252)