ABSTRACT
The development of habitat restoration techniques for restoring critical woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) winter habitat will play an important role in meeting the management thresholds in woodland caribou recovery plans. The goal is to restore disturbed environments within critical winter habitat for the declining woodland caribou. Woodland caribou are diet specialists, utilizing lichen-rich habitat for forage during winter months. Cladonia sub-genus Cladina is the most frequently eaten species during this time. Herein, we provide: 1) A review of previously used methods for transplanting Cladonia sub-genus Cladina and their feasibility in restoring woodland caribou winter habitat; 2) A stepby- step protocol on how to carry out a terrestrial lichen transplant program (using Cladonia sub-genus Cladina and C. uncialis); and, 3) An evaluation of our protocol through the establishment of a case study in northern British Columbia. Our results indicate that transplanting C. sub-genus Cladina fragments is the most efficient technique for transplanting terrestrial lichen communities, but transplanting lichen ‘patches’ or ‘mats’ may also be effective.

Cool article about seed banks. We really need to start creating and using them

American Rivers has some new (as of a month ago) videos of the Copco 1 and J.C. Boyle dams being breached. I'm really excited to see how the Klamath river responds to these dams being removed.

Copco 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEAuGu6zp-0&t=106s

J.C. Boyle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDD8lYV_GRQ

Also, someone made a post-breach video of the river with their drone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIJcOaSBsOg

(Sorry for not including alternate Piped links. That site isn't working for me right now for some reason.)

A good example of rough mounding benefits.

A 20-year experiment conducted by Colorado State University researchers in Yellowstone National Park found that restoring apex predators like wolves was not a quick fix for ecosystems degraded by their absence. While wolf reintroduction lowered elk populations, willows and aspens did not recover as strongly as expected even after carnivore numbers rebounded naturally. Constructing fences and dams showed the importance of reducing browsing and increasing water access independently. The study challenges the idea that easily reversing food webs can undo lasting ecological changes.

Good article that shows how mine dumps can be reclaimed to support human use (drive in) and how re-mining of wastes can be feasible in some cases

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/5492769

“The AER estimates over $45 billion in remediation and reclamation liabilities in the oilsands. This number may be a dramatic underestimate, with figures in leaked, official presentations suggesting as much as $130 billion in liabilities covered by less than $2 billion in security deposits,” University of Calgary School of Public Policy researchers Martin Olszynski, Andrew Leach, Drew Yewchuk wrote in a recent paper.

Silvia Pinca purchased 80 acres of land in New Zealand that was previously used as a pine plantation. She is working to rewild the land by removing invasive species like pines, pampas grass, and banana passionfruit and replanting native trees and shrubs. So far she has removed over 32,000 pines and planted hundreds of native seedlings. Native birds are starting to return to the land to help with seed dispersal. Her long term goal is to restore the native forest ecosystem and create a nature reserve.

Abstract This paper presents preliminary assessment of seedling survival and growth of green alder (Alnus viridis (Chaix) DC. in Lam. & DC.) planted on fly ash disposal sites. This kind of post-industrial site is extremely hard to biologically stabilize without top-soiling. The experiment started with surface preparation using NPK start-up mineral fertilizer at 60–36–36 kg ha-1 followed by initial stabilization through hydro-seeding with biosolids (sewage sludge 4 Mg ha-1 dry mass) and a mixture of grasses (Dactylis glomerata L. and Lolium multiflorum Lam.) (200 kg ha-1). Subsequently, three-years-old green alder seedlings were planted in plots on two substrate variants: the control (directly on combustion waste) and plots with 3 dm3 lignite culm from a nearby mine introduced into the planting pit. Five years of preliminary monitoring show good survival seedling rates and growth parameters (height (h), average increase in height (Dh), number of shoots (Lo) and leaf nitrogen supply in the fly ash disposal habitat. Treatment of the site with a combination of lignite culm in planting pits and preliminary surface preparation by hydroseeding and mineral fertilization had the most positive effect on green alder seedling parameters. The result sindicate that it is possible and beneficial to use green alder for biological stabilization on fly ash disposal sites.

I saw an article the other day slamming the use of end pit lakes in mining. I think it's relatively easy to have a strong opinion an aspect of mining like this, and mining in general.

My personal opinion is that mining is primarily a necessary evil. It has vast capacity to royally fuck up a landscape for a very long time, but it also has the ability to provide us with metals and materials we need.

In this vein, I don't much care for mining of materials that don't support industrial uses or the green transition (e.g., diamonds). I also don't think mining is going anywhere soon. It's about as old as humanity, with some mines dating to 20,000 BCE.

My viewpoint aligns pretty well with the ICMM which aims to allow sustainable mining, through careful planning.

Anyway, My point is not to debate the merits or risks of mining.

I want to talk a bit about why pits are used for tailings and other mine wastes, and the engineering and planning that goes into them.

General

As we know, mining entails the removal of rock that contains minerals or metals of interest. In the case of metals, exploratory drilling will identify areas/veins of ore. The ore is a mix of local rock and the metal of interest. There are cut-off grades, where below a certain concentration, it's not feasible to mine, but I won't get into that. I'm going to primarily focus on metal mining, since that's my strength.

Anyway, since metals are contained with in the rock, the rock must be crushed and milled (e.g., leached with chemicals, and the solution precipitated to get condensate). Here's a really simplified diagram

This process results in the condensate, and a by-product slurry called tailings, which comprises of extra chemicals, water, and the crushed rock. In addition, to get to the ore rock, waste rock (ore rock below cut-off grade) is cast to the side as spoil in huge stockpiles millions of tons in size.

Geochemistry

The issue, however, is that sulphur or other metals often occur with the ore rock. For instance, it's common for a copper mine to also produce gold or molybdenum, or for zinc mines to produce lead as well.

If the ore rock is high in sulphur (commonly in the form of pyrite), when it is exposed to air it weathers to produce sulphuric acid, which rapidly lowers pH in the immediate vicinity, and can really cause a pile of trouble with water. Tailings, since they're just crushed ore rock, and the waste rock that was moved out of the way to get to the ore are common sources of potentially acid generating (PAG). Not all rock is acid generating (called NAG - non-acid generating). Further, metals can leach from rock on their own, but it's more common with the lower pHs associated with PAG.

So really, the issue is exposing rock that was once in anoxic conditions to oxygen. That's where a lot of the problems start.

Water

Another thing to note (briefly) is that any water that hits the mine disturbance footprint is considered 'contact water' and generally must be managed, treated, and released, regardless of its water quality values (e.g., it could be below environmental guidelines, but since we can't easily distinguish, and water quality can change rapidly, we blanket treat everything).

So how do we put a bunch of material on the surface in anoxic conditions?

Well, we have this pit, right over here, where we just dug it out of... and we have a bunch of water that we'd have to treat, which is expensive...

I bet you can see where this is going.

Pit Lakes

To deal with contact water and to prevent metal-leaching/acid rock drainage (collectively; ML/ARD), companies deposit tailings, waste rock, or other ML/ARD material into the pit and cover it with water.

A lot of thinking goes into this. Geological and Hydrogeological studies are conducted, to determine contact water will make its way into the ground water.

Water balance models are created, under several different climate scenarios and projections on the pit lake water elevation (level) are given to mine closure planners and regulators.Water balance modelling aims to ensure that the wastes stay covered no matter what.

Water quality modeling is also conducted, as sometimes specific contaminants can be bioremeidated, or remeidated in the pit itself using chemicals to improve water quality and mitigate risk.

further, human health risk assessments (HHERAs) and environmental risk assessments (ERAs) are a key component for successful mine closures.

What about tailings ponds?

Another way to manage tailings is though a tailings pond (Tailings Storage Facilities - TSFs). These are designed to prevent ML/ARD issues during operations. during active closure and reclamation, they are dewatered (usually though evaporation or other water mgt. means) capped with an impermeable layer (to reduce oxygen infiltration through gas exchange or dissolved oxygen in water) and revegetated.

Some tailings are really fine, and really wet, so they pose very large post-closure geotechincal issues for the TSF. There's a lot of research going on around dry-stacking or paste-stacking tailings. This is essentially changing the milling process to create tailings that are more geotechnically stable, and then capping them with a similar impermable layer and placing coversoil on them and revegating them.

Why are you telling me all this?

The point that I'm trying to make is that there's a lot of thinking that goes into the lifecycle of most mines, particularly in the developed world. Developing world mining and artisinal mining can be abhorent. However, if careful planning is done, then things are less hairy.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/8863969

Folks who know me closely know that I'm kind of a geek for patterns - I see them in behavior, in housing, in gardens and natural structures, everywhere. They are at play all around us at varying levels of scale, and anyone who's ever said "oh this again" can hopefully relate.

Christopher Alexander (author along with others of A Pattern Language, The Nature of Order, Notes on the Synthesis of Form), the speaker in this video, has been formative in my understanding of patterns in a way few others have. His approach to design as a conduit for improving the lives of people and the world writ large have been an inspiration.

I want you to forget that he's talking to a room full of programmers. Some of it is abstract, and heady, but think about the patterns in your lives and how even slight alterations to them can influence the course of things. I'm coming to this talk from the aspect of a gardener, of a nursery owner interested in restoration ecology, of someone who wants each of us to have a closer connection to the natural systems at play. Bring who you are to this, and (hopefully) let it inspire you. I'll leave you with this quote from the talk (punctuation mine):

"I want you to help me. I want you to realize that the problem of generating living structure is not being handled by architects or planners or developers or construction people now; there is no way that they're ever going to be able to do that because the methods they use are not capable of it.

The methods that you have at your fingertips and deal with every day in the normal course of events are perfectly designed to do this ... if you have the interest, you have the capacity, you have the means.... And what I'm proposing here is something a little bit different from that which is a view of ~~programming~~ as the natural genetic infrastructure of a living world which you are capable of creating, managing, making available - and which could then have the result that a living structure - in our towns, houses, workplaces, cities - is an attainable thing. Which it has not been for the last 50 to 100 years.

That is an incredible thing! I realize that you probably think I'm nuts because this is not what I'm supposed to be talking about to you. And you may say, 'gosh great idea but we're not interested' but I do think you are capable of that and I don't think anybody else is going to do this job.