Soil recovery and reclamation of mined lands

Abstract

Abstract Mining activity causes serious degradation of ecosystems. In particular soils are heavily affected as original soils are excavated or buried under dumped overburden. Soil restoration is thus a basic precondition for recovery of the whole ecosystem. Many reclamation techniques are focused on site improvement and accelerating initial plant growth and rapid establishment of full vegetation cover. In this chapter, we evaluate these techniques with regard to spontaneous processes of natural site recovery and emphasize that different targets need different reclamation approaches, and that focus on fast site recovery may compromise later ecosystem performance and sustainability.