Evaluation of Ongoing Mined-Land Reclamation on Selected Coal Mines in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado

摘要

The Bureau of Land Management concluded that a system was needed to evaluate strip mined-land reclamation. Predictive methodologies have not been adequately evaluated or tested. The Bureau needs assurance that lease stipulations for coal leases are reliable and practical. A reclamation standard needs to be identified and a reclamation prescription developed by major land resource area. A study plan was developed by the Watershed Staff (D-350), Denver Service Center, that proposed methods to evaluate ongoing reclamation at selected coal strip mines within the major land resource areas having important coal resources. The objectives were: (1) to evaluate ongoing reclamation procedures used by the mining companies and/or identified by stipulations in the reclamation plan, (2) to identify the reclamation standard, and (3) to develop a reclamation prescription for the major land resource areas of the Northern Great Plains, Western Great Plains, Western Range Regions, and Southern Rocky Mountains. Field work was conducted in June 1978 by Dr. Maynard A. Fosberg, professor of soil science at the University of Idaho in Moscow under contract to BLM.