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Regenerating conifers on rough mounded waste rock
(slrpnk.net)
This reclamation is 10 years old and no soil was placed - these are going directly into waste rock. This is high elevation, so the trees grow slowly
Trees are about 80 cm to 150 cm in height. Elevation is somewhere close to 2000 MASL. Upper portions of the site are about 2250 MASL.
Yes, the area was forested, cleared, mined, and then they recreated the area by recontouring the landscape to about 26°, and then rough mounded (created the mounds you see) using equipment and planting into it.
While I get what you're getting at, as in they can decimate early rec, I don't think it's a factor here.
Layeth thy questions upon me
Thank you for your detailed answer.
Why don’t you think that big game plays a role here? Why recreate the mounds? The literature I’ve read concerning reforestation claims that the mounds of previous trees are beneficial because of their stumps degrading on top and better water retention trough the root system. This information might be old though.
Rough mounding is used for three reasons:
They certainly have a role, but I think there's a lot more preferential browsing sources for them in the surrounding areas, rather than this area. It's just recovering, and doesn't likely offer that great of a food source for them, when there are old growth forests near by.
That is interesting! Do you have any data concerning the effectiveness of this method and would you be willing to share it? I’d be interested to incorporate that into work.
As for big game, we found that especially young growths are a source of nutrition for red, roe and fallow deer, as well as several other species, all that f which tend to preferentially browse newly established forests. Several forestry certific have incorporated proper game management in their national standards because of these experiences in Germany.
Here is a little PDF on the method by the guy who developed it
here's a paper by him.
2012 paper
you can do rough mounding a couple ways; another way is to just have humps of topsoil, if you don't want to admix your soils, and it works pretty well. I've seen the results first hand.
We've seen this too, over here; they'll come in and eff up our sites, but it didn't happen here, probably because it's kind of in the middle of the mine.